2.5 Stars - Dull
Following the Success of Misery, Stephen King was given a lot more free reign to write without editorial input, the result was a less tight, albeit more ambitious book. The Tommyknockers.
The Tommyknockers is the story of Bobbi Anderson, who whilst in the woods behind her house trips over a strange metal object, she stars digging it up to find it to be much larger than she first anticipated. At the same time her friend Gard comes to see her after humiliating himself in a drunken rage after a successful poetry reading. The metalic object, which would seem to be a spaceship, gives out a strange sort of radiation that begins to affect everyone in the town, they get smarter and start building unusual contraptions. They also start to change physically, losing teeth, getting thinner and their skin becomes translucent. Only Gard isn't affected, due to a metal plate in his head, he has to play a long game, continuing to help the townspeople as they try to excavate the ship all the while trying to find a way to put a stop to them.
The book is a decent story, and another of King's stories wherein he tells the story of a whole town of people, each person with well developed characters and lives. It is far from being his best work, but it is a pretty good story all the same.
The miniseries is pretty bland, the usual King miniseries fare. Good concept let down by a poorly written script, mediocre performances and nineties special effects. Yet another three hour long waste of time really.
As an adaptation it gets a lot wrong, leaving out several characters, not fully exploring the elements of addiction and not capturing the time scale of the book properly. Also they changed the way the aliens work, in the book the townspeople were being transformed into beings similar to the aliens, in this the aliens are stealing the townspeople's life force so they can return from the dead.
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