SummaryDeath row attorney Henry (Andre Holland) returns to his hometown of Castle Rock, Maine after receiving a call from Shawshank in this psychological horror series from J.J. Abrams and Stephen King.
SummaryDeath row attorney Henry (Andre Holland) returns to his hometown of Castle Rock, Maine after receiving a call from Shawshank in this psychological horror series from J.J. Abrams and Stephen King.
Shaw, Thomason, Abrams & Co. really nail the core concepts of King’s storytelling here. Each character gets a good amount of screen time to focus on introspection. ... Castle Rock is a can’t-miss series for Stephen King fans and a must-watch horror show for fans of dark, thrilling, character-focused mysteries.
The show makes skillful use of its episodic medium, carefully pacing its storylines and building out its world while still making sure each hour is filtered through generous helpings of creepiness.
Through its first three episodes, Castle Rock builds out its world and character relationships thoughtfully and deliberately. Whether it holds up through the entire 10-episode first season remains to be seen, but Castle Rock gets off to a strong, engrossing start.
When Castle Rock is focused on being a damn fine story--a smart one, a playful one--it can be good, even great. When it tries to be a wonderland for King fans, it races past the line of referential, rounds through fan service, and steps into cliché, sometimes even inching toward self-parody. Your response to that particular tendency may range from puzzlement, particularly if you’re not much of a King fan, to downright irritating.
Four episodes in, the plenitude of incident creates an effect more like dilution than density, and it’s hard to see the trees for the forest of allusion. Castle Rock sometimes feels like a grab bag of rehashed tropes. It is freshest when its paranormality flickers with metaphors for a real world haunted by prison systems and spotted with dying small towns and plagued by sensations of outsiderness.
If it’s meant to frighten, it’s not very good at that. If it’s meant to ruminate on the nature of evil, then that message never gets through. If it’s meant to creep you out, then it barely registers. ... The first three episodes, which premiere in one chunk Wednesday (a new episode will be released each week), spend too much time laying groundwork, meting out clues and references at such a sluggish pace that they’re not worth noting, unless the show considers its mission to act as a Stephen King book club.