| Columbia Pictures | Release Date: August 27, 1993 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
4
Mixed:
8
Negative:
6
|
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Critic Reviews
Needful Things is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don't make better films. The movie only has one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing.
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Though this is by no means the grisliest or most witless film made from one of Mr. King's horrific fantasies, it can lay claim to being the most unpleasant. Why? Because when you strip away the suspenseful buildup to a King story, you're often left with mechanical moralizing and crude, sophomoric small talk. Needful Things has more of both than any film could ever need.
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Slow-paced and repetitive, Needful Things is overlong and overwrought, and the whole thing should be promptly exorcised.
[27 Aug 1993, p.A]
Even by King-movie standards (and there are none lower), the misanthropy, grotesque humor, and all-out ugliness is itself in maximum overdrive. [27 Aug 1993, p.3D]
The message the movie preaches? The ills of a consumer society, I guess - all those needful things needlessly bought. And the best way to put that preaching into practice? Shut your wallet and pass on this little treat. [27 Aug 1993]
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