*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This is a movie with not the best reputation out there. It feels and looks like a late sequel to Brian De Palma's "The Fury", which was still a movie I liked better than this one.
Seems that one of the foremost reason why this movie isn't well liked is because it has some controversy in it. Drew Barrymore, who still was a 8 or 9 year old kid at the time, is killing a lot of people with her kinetic powers in this movie. Sort of the same reason why there was some controversy about "Kick-Ass" at the time. She kills by literally setting people on fire and blowing stuff up, with her powers (never thought I would ever been seeing Drew Barrymore blowing up George C. Scott). People tend to not like seeing kids doing stuff like that, even when it's in 'just' a movie. I personally have no problems with it, so it's nothing I hold against the movie but I of course can still see the reason why some people have issues with it.
But still I also didn't liked this movie all that much. I was still really liking this movie during its first half, when it was being a movie in which the main characters were on the run but I really started to loose interest fast the moment they got captured and locked up for research. All of the pace and excitement seemed to be gone after that and the movie just never really recovered.
You can definitely 'blame' the fact that this movie is being based on a book for that. I'm sure the story and character development and emotions all worked out fine in Stephen King's novel but it just isn't a type of story that translates well to the big screen. It makes too sudden big jumps in its story, has too many distracting and pointless sidetracks and characters and the contrasts between the first and second half of the movie are just too big. Apparently a remake of this movie is currently on the way but I have a scoop for you; It will bomb! The story just isn't good or interesting enough movie-wise and too many elements within it really don't work out too well on film.
It's pretty amazing to see how much talent was involved with this movie, while at the same time it also had a quite low-budget. It's based on a novel by Stephen King, has action expert Mark L. Lester as director, Frank Capra Jr. and the Dino De Laurentiis Company behind the movie its production and it's starring David Keith, Drew Barrymore, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen and George C. Scott. So lots of big names behind this movie, which make it perhaps a bit of an interesting 'failure' without at the same time calling this movie an horrible one though.
No, it really is not an horrible movie by any means but it at the same time just isn't working out well either. It's a movie that you can definitely watch but when you don't, you're not missing much with it.
6/10
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