When Henry Deaver was a boy, he disappeared for 11 days. In a town of murder, suicide and mayhem, Henry’s vanishing and its tragic aftermath remain the biggest mystery in the macabre history of Castle Rock.
As an adult, Henry receives a cryptic call asking him to return to his hometown. In nearby Shawshank Prison, a man was found in a cage, hidden in a decaying wing, down in a water tank. The man only spoke once: he asked for Henry. Now a lawyer, Henry returned home to help out this mysterious prisoner.
That’s the loose premise of Castle Rock. It lets you know, in no uncertain terms, that it is a show designed to celebrate the legacy of Stephen King, utilizing one of his most notorious of sleepy, sinister and decaying Maine towns. To read Stephen King, one would think that all of Maine fell apart at the seams as the grand logging industry died off. It is as if the whole state is the northeastern equivalent of the southern town where the train no longer goes. The houses are in desperate need of repair. The roads are half dirt, and the cities haven’t seen new municipal life since the ‘60s. Castle Rock is no different.
For readers of King’s books, the nods toward the source work are everywhere: a stack of newspaper clippings about a rabid dog and a mysterious store owner. The opening title is a patchwork of bits of King novels; like a ransom note, they come together to begin the tale. You can catch pieces as the credits appear. Pennywise is mentioned here, as is a scrap proclaiming REDRUM. There are excerpts from Salem’s Lot and The Green Mile. We are told the devil is in Castle Rock (Needful Things).There is a map of Maine that includes Derry, Arrowhead, and the location of The Storm of the Century. It is a reminder that what is about to unfold isn’t relegated to the town of Castle Rock. Audiences can expect horrors from all across King’s mythology to appear, like ghosts of his other tales, ready to frighten us.
Beyond here lie spoilers.
Much has been said about the show’s pedigree leading into the premier. Actors from across the film and TV King pantheon appear. The show makes no haste in reminding us that these actors are pedigreed because they are extraordinarily good at what they do. The series opens with Terry O’Quinn (known for his role as John Locke in Lost, O’Quinn starred in 1985’s Silver Bullet). It is the morning of his retirement. He makes his wife breakfast in bed, kisses her goodbye, and leaves not for work, but to commit suicide in an utterly gruesome manner. O’Quinn plays the scene with quiet contemplation and resignation. His sweetness with his wife is touching. His calmness is eerie.
Bill Skarsgard (Pennywise from 2017’s IT) is the young man found in a cage, buried beneath dirt and time in Shawshank Prison. He is discovered after the suicide of the retiring warden. His large, soulful eyes speak of nothing. He is a blank slate, a mystery. His mystery only grows. During the night, he seemingly escapes his cell and slaughters all of the guards while the guard with a golden heart, Zalewski, watches through security monitors. It is all an illusion.
Sissy Spacek (1976’s Carrie) plays Ruth Deaver, adopted mother of Henry Deaver. In present day she is living alone, aimlessly wandering around her home, clearly afflicted with dementia. She has driven off her nurse caregiver, and is seemingly shacked up with her paramour, Alan Pangborn (a name King fans will recognize, Pangborn is played by Scott Glenn).
Pangborn, while steadfast and solidly in the hero category in every King novel he appears, is something of a question mark here. He is the one who found child Henry when he went missing. He is the paramour and sole caregiver of Ruth (the show portrays caring for a person with dementia gracefully; the paranoia, fear, forgetfulness. He navigates it tenderly, and with a shot of brass). He is a keeper of secrets, and his motives are his own.
Melanie Lynskey (Sister, from 2002’s Rose Red), is Molly Strand, the childhood friend of Henry Deaver. She has grown up to be a real estate agent who struggles with an increasingly common real-life American problem: prescription drug abuse. She purchases pills from teenage drug dealers and steals pain pills from her sister’s medicine cabinet. She hides behind her large sunglasses and timidly insists she has a condition. As it turns out, she does: she can hear other people’s thoughts. Or, to put it in the King parlance, she shines. Molly is drawn to Henry so profoundly that she carries a horrific secret related to his 11 missing days. She uses pills not just to drown out the shining but to bury the memory of her crime.
Henry Deaver (Andre Holland) grew up hated by his town. The gossip says he tried to murder his father and then came back fit as a fiddle, pretending to have lost his memory. He is haunted by his childhood and as an adult moved to Texas to try to save death row inmates. When Zalewski calls him, he doesn’t know much, but he answers the call. From the moment he steps foot into Castle Rock he is besieged by stares, hostility, and blame. Though he appears in the story as the sweet, sensitive, hero, he is treated, unequivocally, as a villain. And he just might be; we learn from Pangborn that the retiring warden saw his no-name prisoner as the devil.
The question, then, is this: Is Pangborn right, is Henry unknowingly bringing hell to Castle Rock? What happened in those 11 days he was missing? What does his missing time have to do with the prisoner?
The only glimpse of Henry’s missing time the audience is shown throughout the first three episodes is his adopted father asking, “Do you hear it now?” That question is repeated by the prisoner. It’s not clear how much Henry remembers of his missing time; the memory very well could have been Molly’s, via her connection with Henry.
These are just the major mysteries of Castle Rock. The show is filled with questions, both written into the plot and gifted to the audience through macabre imagery. Molly is haunted by visions of the weird, from a congregation of bandaged invalids to a mock courtroom peopled by children in devilish papier mache masks. There are short bursts of violence throughout the first three episodes, like little bloody intermissions. So far the gore is subdued; the horror, however, is just warming up.
There are scenes that creep up on you, slowly taking hold. There is an overwhelming feeling that nighttime will not be kind to any of our characters. There is a character that is more metaphor than man, who is either a victim of religious fervor or this story’s Man in Black. And beneath it all, in the wilderness, where Henry disappeared and the warden took his own life, there is something … else.
It is King as delivered by his faithful.
The first three episodes are quietly creepy. It’s as if, tonally, the series aims for that feeling at night that there’s something in your room. The first three episodes deliver well enough that every Wednesday, I’ll be excited to find out.