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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

The Institute review – this is how you butcher a Stephen King novel

Joe Freeman reclining in a dental chair with headphones on
Joe Freeman plays a super-smart teen with nascent telekinetic powers in The Institute. Photograph: Chris Reardon/AP

Me, I’m always in the mood for hokum. You can serve it to me at any point on the largest platter you have and I will grab my hooey knife and absurdity fork and start shovelling. But, like any chef, you have to know what you’re doing. You have to make some effort, have the basic ingredients assembled in the right proportions and send it out from the kitchen hot, steaming and looking delicious. Tepid hokum, bland hokum – well, that ain’t no hokum at all.

And so to the latest Stephen King adaptation, this time by Benjamin Cavell and directed by Jack Bender (Lost, From, Under the Dome – the latter another King tale) of the horror master’s 2019 novel The Institute, travelling to our screens under the same name.

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