Next up on the Letterboxd Challenge is a Stephen King movie you haven’t seen. As you might imagine, my wife has seen a ton of them, so most of the obvious ones were out. This is one of those ones where it barely feels like Stephen King wrote it at all (and I honestly have no idea how faithful it is to the source material; interestingly, Tony Gilroy, who everyone is currently loving on for Andor, wrote the screenplay).

It’s not 0% King — it is definitely in Maine, a fact made clear with everyone’s weird-ass accents (John C. Reilly’s is particularly nutty; David Strathairn’s feels like Maine by way of Ceres). And people do die. But it’s not really horror at all, and there’s nothing supernatural.

But so what it is, is a moody melodrama where a death in the present has stirred up echoes of a death in the past, and you the viewer (and a determined lawman) are trying to get to the bottom of what really happened with both deaths. The screenplay has a kind of spiral structure, where you see the core of an event, and then over time it unwinds to reveal more and more of the context around it, which often changes the meaning of what you saw previously.

Done poorly, this would feel gimmicky and full of cheap reverses; but it’s not done poorly, and it works. The director, Taylor Hackford, integrates the flashbacks into the landscape — as the camera settles on a particular part of the room or a field or whatever, the shot might fade into warmer colors, and now here we are in memory. Meanwhile, the cool colors of the present establish a chilly mood, with frequent shots of the sky echoing that, and then also making thematic sense as we find out more about the past. The Danny Elfman music supports the mood without being overbearing.

But most of all, the acting is great, particularly Kathy Bates. I’ve never seen Misery, which is the movie Bates is famous for, and so I always figured her deal is that she was good at playing that kind of sweet-but-scary role. But no, her character here — the titular Dolores — needs to be brassy and emotional in a kind of no-fucks-given way, while also having hidden depths and secrets, and she really nails it perfectly. Like, A++ acting in really just defining this character. Jennifer Jason Leigh isn’t quite as good as her daughter, but still does a very good job with a role that’s asking a lot.

It seems like this movie got vaguely positive reviews and then kinda got forgotten. I don’t want to over-praise it, but I’ve watched a bunch of early-’90s family-driven horror/suspense-type movies lately, and this is by far the best of that lot. I think at this point, it probably counts as underrated.