Plague aftershock as entertainment seems preposterous right about now, but when transformed by the weirdo extremes of “Sweet Tooth’s” universe, the subject becomes a post-apocalyptic joyride.

Gross and engrossing, TNT’s two-parter that begins Sunday night is downright spooky. It’s also more than a little hokey. Be prepared to wince at lines like “literature has become elitist, like black-light photography” and “she’s dead, or undead.” But fine performances from Rob Lowe as the tortured writer, Andre Braugher as the high school teacher with secrets, and Donald Sutherland as the creepy antique dealer in the big mansion serve up a heap of horror. In lesser hands “Salem’s Lot” could quickly get campy.

Empathy and closeness radiates from the screen. ... The lead performances from relative newcomers Mbedu and Pierre are transporting. ... Jenkins is renowned for his nuance, subtlety and meditative silences, and those qualities transfer to television, with each episode of the series resembling a short film — beautiful cinematography, carefully considered locations, meticulous sets and wardrobe.

On the evidence of the first three-fifths of the series, it’s difficult to tell where things might be headed over the remaining two or just when the engine that will drive the story to some conclusion or cliffhanger will kick in.

As unoriginal as haunted house stories get, Stephen King’s Rose Red is his “Carrie” and “The Shining” meets “Ghostbusters,” “Night of the Living Dead” and the Psychic Hotline. Written by the prolific King, this overwrought, overacted three-parter on ABC is campy, not scary or even stomach-turning.

Diverting but stretched-out...While entertaining at times, Storm of the Century, too, rises barely midway up the horror scale. If you’re looking for a major fright, in other words, look elsewhere.

Your tolerance may vary for sentiments like “You don’t need to make room for Izzy in the apartment, you need to make space for her in your hearts” — mine is low — and there’s nothing here that strives to be remotely novel.

Once she is indefinitely ensconced in the comfy AirBnB-esque guest house run by quasi-love interest Danny (Patrick Brammall, “No Activity”) and the other characters, including Austin Crute as Jackie’s roommate and Emma Caymares as Freddie’s girlfriend, have entered their mutual orbits, things relax and improve.

The cast — including Dan Ahdoot as the chief engineer, Gary Anthony Williams as the chief mechanic, Freddie Stroma as their dim driver and officer manager Sarah Stiles occupying the Remini role — is very good, with enough depth and breadth that jokes can come from character. They’re fun to watch, but I never felt especially invested in their plotlines. But I laughed some.

Treads so softly upon the issues it half-raises that it may as well be “Punky Brewster” (see below). ... Scenes feel more put on than lived through. On the other hand, when it spends quality time with Riley’s sister Lizzie (the excellent Elizabeth Alderfer), quietly off the rails since the death of her helicopter pilot fiancé — death again! — it finds weight and realism the rest of the show doesn’t quite achieve.

Amiable. ... Much of the action revolves around the family, who seem authentically related, but there are also excursions into manic hijinks where grown men get everything wrong and wind up breaking stuff. Anyway, it’s an easy hang.

It is highly predictable and quite watchable.

Thede and her cast take the kind of risks Che chooses not to, even though he enjoys safe harbor at “SNL.” And just as he’s been upstaged on “Weekend Update” by titanic impressions from the likes of Bowen Yang this season, Che is absent from many of his own series’ high points. ... When the center of the show looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, it’s near impossible to stay invested. Humor with impunity is rarely funny.

However obvious the narrative nuts and bolts, one feels the defeats and victories, the rifts and reconciliations, on a human level. Admittedly, I am a softy, but you too may be moved.

Deft. ... As satire, “Rutherford Falls” is gentle rather than lacerating — even demons may be good people in Schur’s comic cosmology, may even be Ted Danson — and the story more personal than political. ... By not turning people into talking points, Ornelas, Schur and Helms leave their characters free to become who they are in complicated ways, rather than what they are in obvious ones — to stand for themselves.

Pennywise is no sweetheart. Yet this is a story that’s icky, not scary. And when you finally do get a look at the evil force in its natural state, well c’mon! Now, the monster in “Alien” was a load. But this clanky klutz? Please! The performances here, especially Thomas as the stuttering horror novelist Bill, are very good. And director Tommy Lee Wallace nicely mixes realities, artfully using his flashbacks to establish Pennywise and repeatedly return “It” to its 1960 roots.

It shares some themes with the novel. But meaning is obscured by action as the family jumps from frying pan to frying pan to frying pan in an attempt to forestall the fire. “The Mosquito Coast” works best when you just follow along with the running and don’t think too hard about the rest, but the running itself becomes tedious after awhile.

The Tommyknockers may not be the lamest Stephen King screen adaptation to date, but it’s pretty close. One of the author’s lesser novels has been dumbed down exponentially for TV and put through a deflavorizer to remove every iota of the black humor and pop-culture satire that usually make even the silliest King sufferable...The personality-devouring aliens of the title seem to have gotten to the folks who made this movie, too.

Given the complexity of the subject, the inertia of institutions and the polarized state of ... everything, as well as the limitations of even an eight-hour film, it is also almost inevitably a frustrating one, hopeful and dispiriting by turns.

Well worth the wait is the 10-or-so-minute action payoff. It's nightmarish despite the obviously superimposed langoliers (created via digital visual effects) that recharge the final minutes of this miniseries, which isn't over when you think it is. [13 May 1995, p.15]

One of those stomach-churning, white-knuckle fright films that masterfully sets us up, shakes us around and leaves us jumping at our own shadows. David Soul and James Mason star. [13 March 1988, p.2]

There is nothing sensational here, but I watched five episodes in a row with growing interest and found little occasion to talk back to the screen. ... In a really good mystery, the journey is what matters, the scenery, the people you meet: the detective, the bystanders, the suspects, all but one or two of whom will turn out not to be the killer. And “Mare of Easttown” makes those other minutes feel well spent.

Be prepared not to be scared, though. Or even to be stimulated. The Stand is for viewers with time on their hands. Lots of it. And for viewers with patience. Lots of it...Despite its creepshow pretensions, much of it is flat-out dull.

The quietly disturbing, darkly comic masterpiece has been refashioned into something slick and stylized -- one that looks like Disney’s Haunted Mansion, but sounds like “Days of Our Lives.”

The pilot — the only episode available for review as of this writing — is a busy, busy thing that packs in a mess of cursory exposition, introductions, family business, romantic groundwork, an operation for a subdural hematoma and a game of ping-pong, at the expense of subtlety and character.

“The Nevers” is a joy to watch and a thrill to follow. Supernatural realism, complex storytelling, fantastical powers and topical realties meet in this smart, suspenseful and colorful production. A litany of nuanced characters keep this otherworldly tale grounded.

The little team that could is a timeless tale, and though Netflix‘s “Cobra Kai” does a better job at breathing new life into a decades-old story, “Game Changers” is a smooth skate for those already invested in its world of misfits on ice.

Its coming of age by coming to terms with whatever outside forces, natural or unnatural, that would seek to exploit, subject or destroy it. And it handles that very well. The show is full of feeling — its subject, stated explicitly and often, is family and friends and the people who have your back: your Scooby Gang, your Bowery Boys, your indivisible team.