Review: The Dark Tower

Young Tom Taylor draws rather vivid pictures of the images he sees in his head of a Gunslinger, The Man in Black, and The Dark Tower. This, along with some school trouble send off alarm bells for his mum (Katheryn Winnick) and stepfather, and even social services come knocking, looking to take Taylor away. However, everything Taylor sees is actually real, and the social workers are really minions of the evil Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). The Dark Tower turns out to be a portal between worlds, which Taylor eventually crosses. That brings him into the protection of The Gunslinger (Idris Elba) but also alerts the attention of the Man in Black, who has his own evil plans for the boy.

Yes, it’s every bit as bad as its reputation, I’m afraid. One of the most wrong-headed novel-to-film transitions I’ve ever seen, this 2017 Stephen King adaptation from director Nikolaj Arcel (previously the co-writer of the original “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) and co-writers Akiva Goldsman (the notorious scribe of “Batman Forever”, “Silent Fall”, “I Am Legend”, “I, Robot”), Anders Thomas Jensen (“The Salvation”, with Eva Green) & Jeff Pinkner (“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”) takes a series of novels and proceeds to make a less than 90 minute film out of them. I’m not even sure the review even needs to continue. It says just about everything right there. 8 books, 4000 or so pages, and the adaptation runs less than an hour and a half? There was absolutely no way this was ever going to work, and it doesn’t begin to.

It’s like “They Live” meets “The Stand” (The Man in Black may or may not be Randall Flagg) meets YA fiction as filtered through M. Night Shyamalan on one of his bad days (“The Village”, “Lady in the Water”), and then hacked in half in the editing room by Stevie Wonder. I haven’t read the King stories, but to me this played surprisingly kiddie-oriented to me, but also quite clearly played like something that had been ripped to shreds and all of its substance torn out. I’m not remotely surprised that there were four writers involved in adapting it, it plays very much like it. This is really messy stuff that also seems like it’s in a hurry to nowhere much. There’s simply no time within its less than 90 minutes to go much of anywhere fully-developed or even half-developed. This feels like something that should be epic in scope and with enough depth to match that scope. That’s the opposite of what we get here, what we get here is a mess that clearly went through all kinds of reshoots and behind-the-scenes turmoil. In fact, the miscalculation in scope and tone at work here reminds me of another awful King adaptation “Dreamcatcher” (and not just because both films are poorly cast), though in that film’s defence I’m not quite sure there’s much you can do to add any grandeur or maturity to a film about shit-weasels. As much as I loved Kubrick’s version of “The Shining” and the TV miniseries of “The Stand” was quite strong too, this film overdoses on dopey mumbo-jumbo, and more akin to Shyamalan than King on evidence here despite the references to ‘Shining’.

It’s also a film that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. YA Fiction “The Maze Runner”-like story? Apocalyptic fantasy? Demonic horror? At one point it even turns into a fish-out-of-water film. At no point does it come anywhere near being a good film. It’s not the worst movie ever made (or the worst King adaptation), but it’s bad enough to wonder how the fuck it ended up being released. This just wasn’t ready to hit the screens. Who the hell was happy with how this thing turned out?

The cast certainly don’t look to be having any fun. Young Tom Taylor is competent, but Idris Elba (whose character was apparently the main character in the books from what I’ve heard) is surprisingly dull as The Gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey is badly miscast alright, alright, alright. Some people can play disdainful evil well. Christopher Lee made a lengthy career out of several such portrayals. Matthew McConaughey is the opposite of that kind of actor and looks bored out of his skull. He’s a talented guy, but here he finds himself attempting something he’s just not built for and it’s uncomfortable to watch. It’s kind of Tom Cruise in “Interview With the Vampire” or John Travolta in “Battlefield: Earth” levels of ‘wrong actor, wrong role, wrong film’ vibes here.

This is awful and based on its individual parts, it shouldn’t have been. If ever a story deserved the miniseries treatment, it’s quite clearly this one. Instead we get less than 90 minutes of awkward nothingness and a poorly chosen cast. It sucks, and I won’t waste another word on a film that seems to have left a helluva lot of prose to waste. 

Rating: D