1922 (2017)

Stephen King is considered as one of the best novelists in the horror genre & not without reason. Post the stupendous success of IT, Netflix has delivered another movie based on a Stephen King novella of the same name. The movie stars Thomas Jane & Molly Parker of House of Cards fame who plays Arlette James. The movie set in 1922's rural America is about a family of 3 - Wilfred James(Thomas Jane), his wife Arlette & son Henry. The movie is narrated by Wilfred - a farmer who owns 80 acres of land. His wife Arlette has been bequeathed 100 acres of land by her father. While the wife wants to sell all the land & move to the city, her husband & madly in love teenager son have other plans. Wilfred manages to poison his son's mind & conspires with him to brutally murder his own wife. What happens next forms the crux of the story. The movie starts off a bit slowly but picks up pace soon. The movie gets scarier as story proceeds further. The plot is well scripted & will keep you entertained. The characters are well etched & the screenplay is commendable. It does give you a feel of how America was in the 1920's, when it was yet to become the economic & military superpower that it is today. It does provide you a glimpse of rural America & highlights certain aspects of American rural life, hitherto unseen in any other movie. Special mention needs to be given to Thomas Jane for his performance. The movie does fall short in the spooks department. While it does have its share of scary moments, you are likely to be disappointed with the thrills. But if you are a sucker for horror movies, this one is worth watch.

Fmovies: I thought it was fantastic and am kind of surprised by the relatively low rating. But, and this is probably the big one, I love slow, plodding, tension building plots and this one delivered on that front, for me at least. I did have to turn on the sub-titles though because I couldn't understand half of what Thomas Jane was saying, but I didn't live in Kansas (or wherever it was supposed to take place) in the 1920s so who am I to judge. I also loved Molly's portrayal of the strident, bored, ambitious housewife although I almost sympathised with Wilfred for her single-minded desire to leave, and the threat to take everything away from him. Almost. In the end it was an excellent cinematic portrayal of what happens when a moral dilemma results in the wrong avenue of choice.

Nebraska, 1922. Wilfred and Arlette James and their teenage son Henry move to a farm after Arlette inherits it from her father. After a while Arlette decides to sell it and move to the city, as the farming life is not for her. However, Wilfred is determined to stay, and will kill to ensure that this is the outcome. This reaps a whole lot of unintended consequences.

Based on a Stephen King novella, this movie had heaps of potential. The guilt, the unintended consequences, the paranoia - all these had the potential for a tight, engaging, profound drama. Yet it doesn't deliver, just feeling listless and unimaginative. There's no real engagement, as the main character doesn't really do anything to deserve our support and empathy.

The Henry-Shannon sub-plot did provide some characters to follow but that received too little screen time.

The ending does tie everything together and provides a point to it all, but that point is quite predictable and was already apparent.

1922 fmovies. Amazing performance by Thomas Jane and beautiful cinematography make this a perfect example of style over substance. The second half of the film lost a lot of its grip on me. The story is harrowing but feels underwhemling. Works better as a novella and perhaps should have been made into an 80 minute movie. Still worth a viewing.

The movie 1922 - based on the Stephen King novella with the same name - starts of promising. We are shown a great field with corn, belonging to our main character Wilfred James and his wife Arlette, who inherited the land from her deceased father. Although the two have some problems concerning their marriage, the sheer amount of corn just makes more then up for it. The farmer and his wife posses corn as far as the eye can see. But after all that corn is harvested before the incoming winter, we don't see that corn ever again. I guess one could draw a parralel between the literal decline of the amount of corn - the one vegetable Wilfred loves so much he even kills his wife to prevend her from selling the land on which the corn resides - and the mental decline of Wilfred and the physical decline of the estate as the movie progresses along after Wilfred's sin, but who cares. I just wanna see more corn. I rate this movie six out of ten pieces of corn: not enough corn. Gosh darn I just love corn so much.

This movie is okay, is very slow up until maybe the last half hour. This whole movie could have been jammed into half an hour... Not worth the watch unless you're in for something not highly entertaining, and are a die hard fan of Stephen King. Being one myself I wasn't a huge fan of this film. I'm sure the book is better if there is one.