Written by Gabriel Serrano Denis
Horror maestro Stephen King has been putting regular people in extraordinary circumstances since he typed his first sentence. In his debut novel Carrie (1974), now immortalized on celluloid as the classic Brian de Palma film of the same name, the story moves between an ostracized young girl’s coming of age that awakens telekinetic powers, and the town which suffers her wrath. Salem’s Lot (1975) pits a small group of people against a vampire slowly claiming the titular town for himself. With The Stand (1978), the fate of the entire United States hangs in the balance in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. The stakes are always high, but the scale and reach constantly evolve in King’s imagination.
As interested as he’s always been in full-throttle horror, King is also a keen observer of human behavior, especially when put under immense biblical-proportion pressure. In 1999, King brought his novelistic sensibilities to TV, this time not adapting any of his material but rather providing the screenplay for an original three-part miniseries which became Storm of the Century. Though this would not be the first time the writer had provided original scripts to be filmed (he wrote the Mick Garris-directed theatrical film Sleepwalkers and created and co-wrote the sci-fi miniseries Golden Years), Storm of the Century would be the first of three TV projects with director Craig R. Baxley and the closest King has come to grafting his themes and ambitions directly to the TV screen.
Set in fictional Little Tall Island, Maine in 1989, Storm of the Century finds the island’s residents scrambling for last minute preparations before a massive blizzard makes landfall. What appears to be the worst storm to hit the area in years is dwarfed by the arrival of a strange man by the name of André Linoge (Colm Feore), who’s first act of murder is but a preamble to the larger horrors he has in store for the people of the island. Captured by local constable Mike Anderson (Tim Daly) and his deputy Hatch (Casey Siemaszko), Linoge seems to nevertheless be capable of influencing and controlling the population, forcing them to commit horrible violent acts. Though Linoge’s endgame is initially purposefully vague, the townspeople quickly realize they are dealing with a supernatural force as deadly as the raging storm.
A sense of community is palpable from the beginning of the tale, King and director Baxley doing an excellent job of introducing the main and supporting players as well as the small tensions amongst them. King regular Jeffrey DeMunn appears as the high-strung and professional over-stepper town manager Robbie Beals, while Debrah Farentino as Molly Anderson tends to the town children at her daycare and worries to death about her husband and his responsibilities as constable. Ursula Godsoe (Becky Ann Baker) tends to the town hall where people slowly gather for shelter from the storm, and Kat Withers (Julianne Nicholson) helps at the supermarket alongside boyfriend Billy Soames (Jeremy Jordan). All these characters seem to be poised to band together, like any good small town where everyone knows each other’s names would, against both natural and supernatural forces, but once Linoge begins revealing deep-buried and festering secrets within the island the seed of distrust begins to grow.
Storm of the Century belongs to the slow-burn category of horror in King’s oeuvre. It shares DNA with other such small-town terrors as Salem’s Lot and The Mist, where the unraveling of ordinary human beings forced into battle with evil forces brings out their true nature, for better and worse. However, the uniqueness of Storm of the Century is how the central mystery draws out and binds the community together in their suffering. However short-lived it might be, for a moment the whole town is equal to the other, in terrible wait for Linoge’s next move. King and Baxley playfully, and macabrely, set up horrible sequences that rattle the viewer and the townsfolk in equal measure. The seriousness with which it all lands is all the more disturbing, seemingly normal people turning into killers in the blink of an eye. Gone is the quirkiness found in some of King’s own novels and film adaptations. This is a story about hard decisions and consequences, and King never shies away from putting his characters in the most horrible situations he can think of.
Clocking at 4.5 hours throughout three episodes, Storm of the Century makes you feel its runtime without dragging the story. The mystery and character work is so strong that one can’t help but sit through the whole series to find out exactly what is going on. And boy does King deliver with the ending. As community and moral obligations are put to the test, King and Baxley deliver one of the best hours of television in horror history. One of the strongest payoffs in King’s body of work, the climactic sequence brings to a boil all the tension and dread and brews a horrifying moral dilemma that would make the people of “Salem’s Lot” shiver. With a harrowing and believable performance from Tim Daly (who’s dramatic talent has never been fully appreciated), the story’s final sleight of hand hits with the force of a gust of wind from a blizzard. When the credits roll for a final time, one feels the gratification of having read a dense and rich novel, full of memorable characters and themes that linger in the psyche long after. But add strong performances, amazing practical effects and miniature work, surreal imagery, and beautifully evocative cinematography, and you have something that stands firmly alongside the best novels and films King has written or been a part of.
