Year released: 2012
THE CHARGE: Cinematic con artistry in an attempt to cash in on the reputation of someone who had NOTHING to do with making the film.
THE EVIDENCE: When you discover a film with an incredibly awesome title like You Can’t Kill Stephen King, one hopes the imagination that led to the creation of that title will be equally displayed throughout the film. One is frequently disappointed. Here, once again, we have a movie that falls short of the hopeful aspirations raised by its title... but somewhat surprisingly, it doesn't fall short by much.
You Can’t Kill Stephen King follows six young twenty-somethings, three men and three women, renting a lakeside cabin in Maine, supposedly near the stomping grounds of the titular horror author. Naturally, one of the guys is a huge Stephen King fan and pesters the locals to spill info on where the horror icon can be found. But the townsfolk don’t take kindly to the young outsiders - local townsfolk never do in these kinds of movies - and the six friends soon find themselves being picked off one-by-one by a killer who seems to take inspiration from the murder methods detailed in various King stories.
"On the count of three, we all run for it to get out of this movie. Ready? BREAK!"
Filmed under the unfortunate working title of “Shush or Die”, You Can’t Kill Stephen King feels like a no-budget movie that originally intended to be something completely different than it turned out to be. A central motif of the film is that the killer is driven to kill by loud noises. What does this have to do with Stephen King? Nothing, really. But it’s pretty clear that noise=death was intended to be the original hook for the movie, and that when the filmmakers realized that this premise was too weak to carry a whole movie, they added the Stephen King angle as an afterthought.
The whole King connection is rather tenuous, and it’s obvious where scenes were inserted to pay homage to the author. One scene, for instance, offers a tongue-in-cheek recreation of the bathtub scene in The Shining until one character turns into Pennywise, the evil clown from King's novel It. The scene is a dream that has nothing at all to do with the rest of the movie, but it’s weirdly amusing and shows off the commitment of the filmmakers and the actors to make their movie more interesting.
Fight the power.
And to their credit, the movie is interesting. I actually became invested in the story as it progressed. There’s also some shockingly good cinematography evident and most of the actors are quite capable in their roles, a cut above average for such a little-known horror comedy.
But make no mistake: ultimately, this is no-budget filmmaking and the film does suffer from the typical no-budget sins. There are long scenes of characters going water skiing and having long conversations that serve no purpose other than to pad the film’s short 80 minute running time. For every awesome shot of the Maine coastline or a stylishly fog-shrouded forest, there’s a shot where the camera isn’t even in focus. If this kind of stuff bothers you, look elsewhere for your entertainment (though if this really bothers you, why would you be visiting this website?).
If you can look past some of its flaws, there’s some definite talent that went into the making of You Can’t Kill Stephen King and it’s worth checking out as a curiosity. Get hold of a copy now, before a certain author files the inevitable lawsuit that will probably pull it from distribution.
Oh and incidentally, the hotties on the video cover actually DO appear in the movie. Too many covers in this genre feature some model who isn't even in the film, so kudos to the filmmakers and distributors for some truth in advertising!
THE VERDICT: You Can't Kill Stephen King is NOT GUILTY of causing Misery, Desperation or Insomnia but shouldn't play Finders Keepers with Needful Things created by the author, lest their Bag of Bones end up in a Pet Sematary near a Dark Tower Under the Dome.
