Today’s peek at the REEL EAST FILM FESTIVAL’S Stephen King DOLLAR BABY selections has to be one of the most intense adaptations of the writer’s work ever produced. From Director Billy Hanson, this film is an adaptation of King’s Survivor Type which was first published in the 1982 horror anthology Terrors, and collected in King’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. Of Survivor Type, King says: “As far as short stories are concerned, I like the grisly ones the best. However the story Survivor Type goes a little bit too far, even for me.”
Though based on King’s story, Hanson’s film gets under your skin in a way that can only work in the cinema. It’s raw and intimate…it invades your personal space. Just when you think the camera is going to cut away from the horror, it does NOT. It just lingers on it. The performance by Gideon Emery is riveting and it has to be since it’s a one man show. Emery displays a physical and emotional range that presents a man who starts off as tragically human but ends up primal and absurd.
Reel East Film BLOG 