Stephen King's work is easy to synopsize and market because his premises are novel. There's a hotel that holds onto memories in "The Shining", a little girl who starts fires in "Firestarter", and a fan who goes nuts in "Misery". It's no surprise that King's work has been cannibalized to death by Hollywood because it's easily reduced to a marketing hook. Marketing King is like marketing a McDonald's hamburger. You know what you're getting. There aren't too many surprises. Jack Ketchum, though much admired by King, is a different kettle of fish. With the exception of "Off Season" and "Ladies Night", his work is not the stuff of Hollywood marketing hooks. The beauty of Ketchum is how he gets into his characters' dark heads. His work is much darker than KIng's and he makes few concessions to mainstream expectations. His horror lives in the house next door or in the mind of the person you're married to. Aside from "She Wakes", Ketchum steers pretty clear of the supernatural and focuses on the sort of people who get arrested every night on the news. Which brings me to "The Lost". It's about a sociopath, Ray Pye, who manipulates and bullies everyone around him. When not destroying other humans with a gun, he destroys them slowly by mere association. You don't want to meet the guy. You want to steer well clear of him. Especially if you're female. Now, this story has been done to death (in novels and films), but because Ketchum is Ketchum, his take on it is fascinating and chilling. The movie version of "The Lost" is less successful and less creepy than the novel because its horror is externalized. We get strange sound effects, bizarre editing shifts, and some interesting color treatments that attempt to internalize the mental dynamics, but what made "The Lost" book so disturbing is only half present here. Still, the movie is a good one. Marc Senter is strong and convincing as Ray Pye and Chris Sivertson's direction is solid. But because Ketchum's beauty is his point of view and not his plotting, the movie's plotting becomes predictable. It will come as no surprise to anyone that Pye goes on a rampage at the end after he is pushed into several corners from which he can't escape. Though the scenes of him blowing people away are potent, their power is diffused by their predictability. Part of me feels that Ketchum works better within the universe of the printed word. Poe is the same. The nature of King's work lends itself to cinematic translation, as does the work of James Patterson and Alistair McLean. With "The Lost", you get a smart, well made tale of horror, but you don't get the essence of Ketchum. You will only get that from a Ketchum novel. So if you can't translate Ketchum adequately to the silver screen, why see these movies? Well, that's the challenge for the filmmaker.
Review of The Lost
