Desperation

Desperation (2006) is a Stephen King adaptation directed by Mick Garris — stream it online on iFILM. A Nevada highway. A sheriff who pulls over a writer, a family and a hitchhiker for no clear reason, and then hauls them into a town called Desperation. No one in town seems to need rescuing, because there is no one left in town.

Ron Perlman plays Officer Colter — enormous, slow-moving and wrong in ways that become clearer with every scene. Tom Skerritt is the writer John Marinville, Henry Thomas plays a teenager whose faith is about to be tested literally. The group has no plan, no reinforcements, and no idea what Colter has already invited into this place.

Garris had directed King's Sleepwalkers and the miniseries version of Salem's Lot, so he knows how the author's rhythms work — the long build, the theological undercurrent, the sense that evil here is ancient and not remotely interested in hiding. Desperation is King working with the idea that sometimes the door just opens and it walks right in. Watch Desperation (2006) online on iFILM.