SummarySet in the 1850s, Captain Charles Boone (Adrien Brody) moves with his three children to his ancestral home in a small Maine town after his wife's death in this drama based on the Stephen King short story Jerusalem's Lot.
SummarySet in the 1850s, Captain Charles Boone (Adrien Brody) moves with his three children to his ancestral home in a small Maine town after his wife's death in this drama based on the Stephen King short story Jerusalem's Lot.
The series twists its horror kaleidoscope well. It falters in places when it comes to character motivation and overwrought relationship drama, but Chapelwaite manages to be both uncomplicated and surprising.
[Chapelwaite writers/showrunners Peter and Jason Filardi] get it so right at the start, gifting audiences with a beautifully mounted period piece, grounded in excellent performances by the entire cast. But by the series’ mid-point, it’s becomes abundantly clear that there isn’t enough necessary story to fill the last five hours.
Chapelwaite is more purely horror and yet somehow duller, especially in a plodding first half. If the first five episodes of Chapelwaite had been condensed to two hours and the last five episodes had been trimmed to another two, I would still say that the miniseries was a slow burn, while acknowledging that there’s schlocky fun to be had in the home stretch.
The questionable effort to extend a short story to 10 episodes backfires here, turning this narrative into a slog, a journey that’s hampered even further by ineffective performances from two tragically miscast leads.