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Positive:
28
Mixed:
15
Negative:
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Critic Reviews
ColliderJul 11, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Shaw, Thomason, Abrams & Co. really nail the core concepts of King’s storytelling here. Each character gets a good amount of screen time to focus on introspection. ... Castle Rock is a can’t-miss series for Stephen King fans and a must-watch horror show for fans of dark, thrilling, character-focused mysteries.
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Oct 15, 2019
Season 2 Review:
What follows is a propulsive story that encompasses not only Annie Wilkes’ origins, but a haunted burial ground, the Battle of Mogadishu, reanimated corpses, and Tim Robbins growling through a sharp-cheddar Maine accent as Ace’s cancer-stricken father, Pop Merrill. ... Every revelation about the character feels both urgent and canon-correct. ... [Lizzy Caplan] does a remarkable job portraying Castle Rock’s reimagined Annie. Her performance is masterfully physical.
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Jul 11, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Though most characters are new (Scott Glenn’s Alan Pangborn, a sheriff who appeared in Needful Things and The Dark Half, is one exception), for King fans the world of Castle Rock will be inescapably familiar. Spending time here feels, in many ways, like coming home--with all of the excitement and dread such a visit entails.
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RogerEbert.comOct 22, 2019
Jul 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
King’s work is at its most frightening when its monsters are more familiar than abstract, reminiscent of the darkness we might encounter every day in others and in ourselves. Castle Rock manages to capture the fear that comes from recognizing that darkness, and as long as the show doesn’t get too preoccupied with the more conventional horrors lurking just offscreen, it may just become the scariest series on TV.
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The Daily BeastJul 11, 2018
Jul 23, 2018IndieWireOct 23, 2019
Season 2 Review:
“Castle Rock” Season 2 hasn’t quite found the tour de force episode its predecessor did, but we’re still in the early goings. What’s here is still effective, affecting, and original — despite appearances. With more stories to tell, “Castle Rock” continues to prove there are many ways to tell them.
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Jul 11, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The early episodes are a little scattered, plot-wise, trying to juggle a multitude of narratives across several timelines, and it takes a while for the storytelling to find its footing. But the Henry Deaver and Skarsgård threads are strong throughout, and the more you learn about this town, the richer and more enthralling the story becomes.
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Oct 29, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Mythology-rich details may bewitch Stephen King superfans, but for the average viewer this is a lot of lumps to be stuffing into too-small Spanx. Even so — recall the warning about anthology series — there is just enough mystery afoot to keep the viewer interested. Caplan, is unsettlingly good as Annie, giving a performance that can be emotionally poignant in one scene and petrifying in another, turning on a dime in an instant.
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Jul 25, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Holland, Skarsgård and Noel Fisher (as a green but determined prison guard) anchor Castle Rock to a solidity that perhaps invites the view to pardon the wan efforts to flesh out other characters or allow us to truly care about them, and thereby fear for them, until the third hour.
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Jul 25, 2018
Season 1 Review:
There are definitely elements of hocus-pocus and holy cow in Castle Rock, as well as scenes of nicely disturbing violence. In other words, just what you both expect and want from a King-based product. What there isn’t, alas, is a lot of forward momentum. The storytelling is pretty logy, taking a long time to make a few points. ... The show has a strong cast. Spacek is superb as Henry’s stepmom. ... Handsomely gloomy, 10-episode project.
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Jul 24, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It’s probably not the best news to hard-core Stephen King fans that I like what I’ve seen of Castle Rock, the J.J. Abrams-produced Hulu series that’s set in one of the fictional Maine towns King has so creepily populated. Because I’m the kind of viewer who tends to like the TV adaptations of King’s stories right up until the moment the otherworldly horror really gets going.
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Jul 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The plot unfolds at such a leisurely pace that, despite strong performances from Spacek (as Henry’s sundowning mother Ruth) and others, the many winks to the official King catalog can’t help initially overwhelming this cover band version of it. ... The series has fully come into its own [by the seventh episode], and the King allusions turn into treats for those who recognize them rather than distracting reminders of classics this newcomer can’t hope to live up to.
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Jul 17, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Its puzzle-box plot is the Stephen King Mad Libs version of a straightforward mystery that, even in its most engrossing moments, lacks the pulpy imagination of the author's finest work. There are jump scares, and one sequence involving a children's game is disturbing, but even at its most frightening, Castle Rock is never surprising.
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RogerEbert.comJul 24, 2018
Season 1 Review:
When Castle Rock is focused on being a damn fine story--a smart one, a playful one--it can be good, even great. When it tries to be a wonderland for King fans, it races past the line of referential, rounds through fan service, and steps into cliché, sometimes even inching toward self-parody. Your response to that particular tendency may range from puzzlement, particularly if you’re not much of a King fan, to downright irritating.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 19, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It's unclear from the first chapters where Castle Rock will rank in the King canon, but judging from the horrific visions generated by the prison's mystery man, we're in for a frightfully fun ride. [23 Jul - 5 Aug 2018, p.10]
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 12, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The show excels at bookending its episodes with big set pieces and stylish suspense sequences. It lets the slack out in between, when all those stories have to jockey for position with the mythology and characters, who are still only partially formed nearly halfway through the season. Castle Rock has to have a lot of personality, because a lot of the people living there don’t.
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TV Guide MagazineNov 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
The clash between grounded psychological horror and bump-in-the-night monster mania delivers fewer shivers than shrugs of confusion. [28 Oct - 10 Nov 2019, p.9]
Jul 25, 2018
Season 1 Review:
A bit of a mixed bag. As the series unfolds, there are King-like touches aplenty, including spectacular acts of violence, unnerving monologues by folksy keepers of Castle Rock lore, and flashbacks that give you just enough information to chill the blood but not enough to resolve ongoing mysteries.
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Jul 24, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Four episodes in, the plenitude of incident creates an effect more like dilution than density, and it’s hard to see the trees for the forest of allusion. Castle Rock sometimes feels like a grab bag of rehashed tropes. It is freshest when its paranormality flickers with metaphors for a real world haunted by prison systems and spotted with dying small towns and plagued by sensations of outsiderness.
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Jul 11, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The failure to get hooked in the story was becoming particularly frustrating by the fourth episode, which at least pushes the series forward by the end. Generally, the show isn't at all scary, nor is it all that suspenseful, and I can't quite put my finger even on the exact genre it's working in.
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Jul 24, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Almost halfway into a 10-episode season, Castle Rock hasn’t made the case that you should care, beyond a generic sense of spooky mystery--or, maybe, a pre-existing attachment to the Stephen King Extended Universe. .... Castle Rock--certainly well-acted and produced, with some striking set pieces--may work well for completists. But it isn’t so successful as TV.
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Jul 24, 2018
Season 1 Review:
If it’s meant to frighten, it’s not very good at that. If it’s meant to ruminate on the nature of evil, then that message never gets through. If it’s meant to creep you out, then it barely registers. ... The first three episodes, which premiere in one chunk Wednesday (a new episode will be released each week), spend too much time laying groundwork, meting out clues and references at such a sluggish pace that they’re not worth noting, unless the show considers its mission to act as a Stephen King book club.
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