Lisey's Story

Lisey’s Story is a great case study for the strengths and weaknesses of King’s writing — beautiful themes occasionally clashing against self-indulgence. Lucky for us, the good outweighs the bad, and like Lisey, we can find a glimmer of closure among the fog of confusion and despair.

“Lisey’s Story” feels overstuffed at times and might have been even sharper and more terrifying if it had clocked in with five or six total episodes, but this is still an elegantly haunting journey with memorably raw and real performances from three of the best actresses in the world — Julianne Moore, Joan Allen and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Even though it’s hard to understand Owen sometimes (I know that he’s a stand-in for a version of King himself, but just let the guy use his God-given beautiful British accent), there’s an earnestness that conveys his love for Lisey and her family.

As the show progresses and the logistics of her journey come into sharper relief, it’s natural to wonder if all of this is worth it. It’s never an easy “yes,” but when the obfuscation starts to melt away and the show isn’t bent on delivering the extremes of human behavior, the punishing ride leads to a destination with some unexpected rewards.

Delivers on a technical level that keeps it compelling beyond its flaws.

The ultimate, lingering frustration of “Lisey’s Story” is its opacity in place of precision, and its inability to reconcile its two halves of romance and horror into a cohesive, satisfyingly concluded whole.

One of Stephen King’s most personal tales, Lisey’s Story has much to admire, but its literary conceits captured in striking but chilly filmmaking do little to get the pulse racing.

It swings for something big and cinematic and artistic and deep, which you may take as a good plan or a bad one. It is the sort of work that some will find ineffably beautiful and others unbearably tiresome. Acknowledging its prettiness and production values, and some excellent performances, I found it better than unbearable but something less than beautiful.

King’s personal fascinations and Larraín’s abstractions mix badly in Lisey’s Story, a deeply confusing series that does eventually reward steadfast patience, but also does a lot to push a skeptical viewer away.

Lisey’s Story is defined by a disconnect between the splendor of its aesthetics and the professionalism of its primary players, and the overstuffed and outlandish nature of its story.

There’s much here that works well: What is meant to be scary is scary, what is meant to touch the heart will. And Moore, always good at playing women trying to project calm, is in fine form. But viewers may wonder what it all adds up to, why this unblinking look at one woman’s hard time also had so much extra, often outlandish stuff that didn’t quite pay off.

What's on screen can be bloated, rambling and exasperating. But Stephen King’s eight-hour streaming version of his favorite among his own scary novels can—thanks to a great cast led by Julianne Moore and Clive Owen—pull you up short with the beauty and terror of marriage.

The overall problem in Lisey’s Story generally doesn’t concern the actors — or the director, since Larrain gives every frame intimacy, however much you sense his desire to buck the increased linearity of the story. No, the problem is the all-too-palpable battle between fidelity to a text and compatibility to a medium.

Despite all the talent, this relentlessly serious endeavor toggles between being dramatically inert and outright silly.

While acting and visuals in the first episode are excellent, and we have some hope that Lisey’s Story will go beyond just imagery and symbolism and give us an actual story, it feels like it will ultimately end up being a bit too frustrating to follow week-to-week.

The series is overstuffed and airless.

There is no great hook to Lisey’s Story, however, nothing that really distinguishes it from the rest of his oeuvre. Instead, we find a host of familiar ideas, recycled and repeated, only louder than before.

Despite a strong cast, the eight-episode miniseries, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+, is also dogged by an absence of solidly drawn characters.

The Apple TV+ limited series lands in the shallow end of the King cinematic pool, with a convoluted story that mostly squanders its big-name cast.

It's a monumental bore. ... Meanwhile, in absence of plot, the cast (sad to say, a fine one) is left to chew the scenery. And chew away they do.

Adapted exclusively by King from his own 2006 novel, Lisey's Story is a mess in almost every conceivable way. It's drawn from a leaden and forgettable novel, and King's ponderous attempt at a screenplay has done nothing to improve it. Neither has Chilean director Pablo Larrain's painfully arty translation of the written word into video. And while Lisey's Story is loaded with female star power—Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joan Allen play sisters—King and Larrain have given them little to do except look head-bangingly anguished or (in Allen's case) catatonic.

Performances can only do so much to mitigate King's exhaustive scripts and the stylized but spiritually chilled approach Larraín takes to directing pieces like this. Writing for readers has a cadence distinct from writing for the screen that eludes King here. ... In the finale King stacks enough endpoints on top of each other and keeps on going that after a point it starts to feel like the cinematic equivalent of medieval punishment.

The cast is superb, especially among the three sisters, and the storytelling takes structural risks. But there’s something deeply unpleasant about “Lisey’s Story,” a stubborn elusiveness and fierce humorlessness that cut off whatever observations it might make about love and human nature. ... “Lisey’s Story” also indulges in a sadistic streak that goes above and beyond the call of duty.

The indulgent and histrionic screenplay represents a final flourish of excess piled into a project already top-heavy to a fault.