Langoliers, de Stephen King

Deep within the video cabinet, my girlfriend pulled out a movie she wanted me to see. I had to watch it, and I couldn't question her choice. And so I watched Stephen King's The Langoliers. Seeing as my girlfriend is a huge mark for King's work, I wouldn't have been surprised by the choice, neither would I be surprised after watching the opening credits that I was in for a low-budget, made for TV effort. While thinking it was a late-80s, early-90s movie I still wasn't shocked it turned out to be a 1995 production. I sat there and expected ropey effects, some dodgy acting and uninspiring production, and again I wasn't surprised. When something like this gets the green light, you have to believe that at least there's a good underlining story. Thankfully that's where The Langoliers delivers. The medium expects you to suspend your disbelief, and you have to do so to get the most out of this, but the premise is strong and the characters, while clichéd which is unavoidable in this type of story, have enough depth to contribute to the plot and tackle the problems ahead.

Dean Stockwell treads water as mystery writer, Bob Jenkins, only delivering lines; a shame given the character's contribution. David Morse (Cpt. Engle) and Mark Lindsay Chapman (Nick Hopewell) do the most to carry the movie along both as characters and performers. I was most impressed with Morse's very matter of fact take of the pilot. Pinchot's Craig Toomey, the loopy head case that's always tough to get right, doesn't quite hit the mark but gets very close. The other actors are substandard TV movie fare, particularly Maberly's poorly acted blind girl, Dinah. She nails acting blind, but is otherwise terribly distracting (rather like Kimber Riddle's hippy breasts).

The plot is involving, the concept intriguing and the whole thing unravels from the characters' perspective so you're never that far ahead and waiting for the movie to catch up with you if you start sussing things out. Suspense does build and the tension with both the incoming noise (and the unknown threat it brings) plus Toomey's threatening insanity can be tangible at points, but the main set-piece is only as effective as the budget allows. The graphics certainly do the what they're meant to but don't quite pay off the build-up.

The biggest criticism is length. I sat through this in one sitting, and three hours really drag. The intended mini-series structure is all too evident and is the only way this piece works, it feels way too long for one sitting. If you can get past the trappings of a TV movie straining at the sides of its budget and you're prepared to watch with a pinch of salt, you'll get an interesting take on time travel adequately presented. If cheesy TV movies aren't your thing, then you'd be better of reading the book. It's apparently one of the truest adaptations of King's work so let's be thankful he didn't write a stinker to begin with.

A passenger plane takes off from Los Angeles and flies into disaster as a group of sleeping passengers awaken to discover that the other passengers have mysteriously vanished.

This made-for-TV movie was based on a Stephen King novella and was originally shown as a two-part miniseries on network television back in the mid 90s. The acting is about what you'd expect from a TV movie, the dialogue is slightly corny at times, and the special effects aren't great, to say the least.

However, I thought the Langoliers succeeded in doing something that you rarely see in horror films in that it successfully took that slow-building feeling of fear and dread that you get when you read a scary novel and transferred it to the screen. Generally speaking, horror movies these days tend to rely on shocks and scares, but the Langoliers is a slow-paced mystery thriller, kind of like a really creepy Twilight Zone episode, where our heroes spend much of their time trying to piece together the clues in order to solve the mystery of their predicament, all while an ominous feeling of oncoming danger just grows and grows. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. 7/10

I finally watched this mini-series last night expecting the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised. Granted, the digital TV effects circa 1995 look very cheesy now, but if you can get past that, you'll enjoy one of the most faithful King adaptations I've seen. One thing seriously bothers me, though. I also recently saw ROSE RED and it was horrendous. It was several hours too long, very borrowed from various other sources, and pretty much a bust altogether. It was Stephen King at his absolute worst. How is it that something as involving and edge-of-your-seat as THE LANGOLIERS gets a lower rating on this site than ROSE RED?

I have to say I enjoyed this film a lot. I hadn't heard of it before but I found the film interesting. This film provides an interesting take on time travel not depicted in other time travel movies.

To be perfectly honest I did not see this as a scare film. It was not remotely frightening to me, but that did not prove to be a negative part to it. The story is brilliantly told, and the sfx weren't that bad. It was clearly an unreal format of effects, but this added to the unique structure.

Overall I enjoyed the Langoliers, a story of mystery and adventure crammed with plot twists.

As many have noted, the acting is mostly horrible, but the dialog was far worse, and I can't bring myself to think the actors weren't cringing inside while filming.

By far the most annoying and destructive aspect of the script is the huge number of scenes where the plot would seem to dictate great screaming urgency but the characters waste time with blank stares or senseless pauses. Any writer who thinks those devices work to heighten suspense needs to go back to school, preferably the 5th grade. It's enough to make you root for the bad guys, er, bad things.

That said, the story was incredibly engrossing -- sufficiently so that we kept the disc running with only one pause in the whole 3 hours. I'm still not sure if that was smart or stupid. I'd like to be able to vote both 2 and 9 simultaneously.