Must See Movie...

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Compared to Maximum Overdrive, Needful Things is great. This movie adaptation is far from great, but is watchable to say the least. I have never read the source material(the book), but it seems it would work better in that medium. Much of the narrative seems to be lost in translation from book to film, where more character development and layering of the story would have paid off better. Needful Things is inconsistent in tone and much off this stuff is out of place in a horror story and comes off aloof and silly. While the horror elements are there they are diluted to almost nothing in this very goofy and cheesy film. I would describe this as starting a band that is supposed to be a Goth band, with half of the band writing material that is in the vein of Kc And The Sunshine Band. The great Max Von Sydow is wasted here as Old Nick and could not save the film. Ed Harris was the best thing about the film and he gave a very good performance. The film from a technical perspective is pretty solid as the film looks good and the f/x are not terrible. Where director Frasier C Heston dropped the ball was tone, the film was not taken seriously enough and needed to be much darker for this to work. Needful Things is not a film anyone really needs. It is a very corny, quirky, disjointed film that fails as a horror story with very little tension or suspense and lacking in focus. Call it Stephen King lite.

When I started to watch 'Needful Things' my thoughts were quite negative. I always have problems with Stephen King's novels, because their endings are often poor. The same thing happened with 'Needful Things' - the whole book was excellent, but the final encounter - in my opinion - was silly and quite stupid. So when I was watching this movie I was sure they won't be able to capture the essence of this story in only two hours, but they did. And in my opinion, they did it very well. They kept almost all of the characters, that bought something in Leland Gaunt's shop - and they chose the good ones. It was very good move for the plot, if they would put every customer it would be too much to follow. The customer's visions were very well captured. The final encounter is different than in the novel, but it's definitely better and simpler with good taste. The sound and camera work is great in whole movie. Music is wonderful and has great dark devilish accent. The casting people made very good job. The actors are perfect for their parts. Max von Sydow made excellent performance as main dark character and captured it's essence with real grace.For me this movie is very good adaptation of King's novel, probably the best one I will ever seen.

This Stephen King adaption tells the story of Leland Gaunt (Von Sydow) an elderly man who happens to be the devil himself. He invades the small town of Castle Rock and opens a unique antique store called 'Needful Things'. Gaunt lures each town member into the store by displaying an item they can't refuse. Instead of money, Gaunt asks each person to play a practical joke of sorts on another person in the town. He cleverly makes the deed sound harmless, but makes sure clues are left behind that will point the finger of blame at the victim's arch enemy in town. The enemy retaliates and soon the entire town is tearing itself apart from within. The only person who seems to see gaunt for what he is, and avoids the temptation himself is town sheriff Alan Pangborn (Harris). He tries to convince the town that there is a devil among them. This is a very subtle tale of horror from Stephen King. Instead of using demons or possession to do his dirty work, the devil uses intellect to do his damage. It is played out in a very clever way and screen writer W.D. Richter certainly makes the script and film fun and amusing. However, there isn't much horror in this film outside of the scary idea of the devil pitting people against each other. Entertaining from start to finish, and all the amusing bits work, but the subtleties of the story and the lack of any true out in the open horror may turn off horror fans looking for gore and slit throats. Director Fraser Heston uses his talented cast well and the actors breathe life into the characters with Max Von Sydow making a great Leland Gaunt. Nice locations make the small town feel authentic. For those not looking for a gore show this horror film is for you.

Being a Stephen King fan, I obviously read the book and I have to say this film does skip a lot of parts. It's like they film everything up to page 200 then skip right to page 400. They missed the Sally Pratt/Lester Pratt bit, they missed Polly's destroying the thing in her azka, they missed how Pangborn's wife and son died, they missed Ace Merrill, The actual store doesn't look a bit like it is described in the book (In the book it's in the middle of the street, in the film it's just standing on its own somewhere), and it would've been nice to see a bit where Gaunt travels to another town, which are the final pages of the book. But King adaptations usually miss out a lot, and that's not necessarily bad. In fact the only faithful adaptations I've seen so far are Misery and Pet Sematary. But the actors all do a very good job. I like von Sydow as Gaunt, I like Harris as Pangborn, the only actors that could've been better were the ones who played Wilma Jerzyck and Nettie Cobb. So all in all a decent job, though it would've been better had it been a little longer and had it contained more of the things that happen in the book.