Where, oh, where would Mick Garris be without Stephen King? The unemployment line? (I’m asking for a friend.) The number could change between the time I hit the “publish” button and this sentence hits your eyes, but Garris has directed seven movies scripted by and/or adapted from the superstar horror author’s work. Although Garris already had achieved mild acclaim with his two first features, 1988’s Critters 2 and 1990’s Psycho IV: The Beginning, once he brought King’s first original screenplay to theaters in 1992, it’s as if he never looked back.
He should, because sorry to say, he’s just not very good at it. The slumber-inducing Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is stunningly awful, in part because it exudes that bush-league feel of made-for-television pictures, but mostly because Garris clearly enables King’s worst inclinations as a screenwriter, including a reliance on jukebox rock, cringe-worthy quips (“Cop kabob!”) and King’s own cameos.
High schooler Charles Brady (Brian Krause, Naked Souls) moves with his mother (Alice Krige, Ghost Story) to a small town in Indiana, where he immediately sets his hormonal sights on a classmate who happens to be a virgin (Mädchen Amick, TV’s Twin Peaks, forever biting her bottom lip). Her inexperience is A-OK with him, because his mom loves virgins. In fact, she feeds upon them.
See, the Bradys are vampiric shape-shifters — half-human, half-feline and all-silly — and Charles’ job is to procure fresh meat for Mama … when he’s not serving up some of his own. (Translation: Incest. We mean incest. These two cannot keep their paws off one another.)
If scares were top among Garris and King’s goals — and they were — the hokey effects ensure that goal would go unreached. The catchpenny-CGI morphs from human form to were-kitties or whatever are wretched enough; Krause and Krige are forced to don makeup appliances that look like ThunderCats characters short a single chromosome. As a viewer, you can’t help but laugh at it — all of it — and if Garris and King intended chuckles, too, they don’t let you know they are in on their own joke. And Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is nothing if not a joke. —Rod Lott