Lisey’s Story

Lisey’s Story has gotten mediocre reviews. It has a 55% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which qualifies it as “Rotten.” This is absurd. I am here to say that everyone who gave it a bad review is wrong.

Okay, let me moderate that a little bit. Lisey’s Story isn’t perfect; it has some pacing problems and an anticlimactic ending (don’t say I didn’t warn you), and it’s confusing that Moore and Owen are playing characters over the course of decades but always look like they’re in their 50s. But dinging it too heavily for a few draggy scenes overlooks the dreaminess and haunting beauty that makes Lisey’s Story so special.

Lisey’s Story is hard to classify. It’s a hybrid psychological horror/character drama/romance/fantasy/thriller. But that difficulty of categorization makes it one of Stephen King’s most personal and enigmatic works. He’s working with vocabulary and symbolism that are completely of his own creation. You probably won’t fully understand what a “bool” is even after completing the series, but you may not really want to, either, because its power is in its strangeness. The descriptor “Lynchian” gets overused to describe anything that’s a little weird, but Lisey’s Story is actually similar to the work of David Lynch in that it’s a work of idiosyncratic vision from a great artist who doesn’t feel the need to over-explain his imagery.

King’s imagination is vividly realized by director Pablo Larraín, who does really extraordinary work here. The mysterious Boo’ya Moon, with its supernatural flora, shrouded figures, and terrifying monster called the Long Boy, is simultaneously gorgeous and menacing, and even the real-world scenes have a magical tint to them. (The series is shot by one of the world’s greatest cinematographers, Darius Khondji, who has worked on Se7en, Uncut Gems, and Too Old to Die Young, another mesmerizing and misunderstood limited series.) Larraín makes the horror viscerally upsetting–you’ll never look at a pizza cutter the same after this–and the drama intimate and touching.

The performances are all great, but particular praise is due to Dane DeHaan, who is absolutely terrifying as a fan who thinks his love of Scott Landon’s books gives him more of a right to Landon’s memory (and unpublished work) than Lisey, his wife. Tom Dooley’s disturbed, misogynistic superfandom makes Annie Wilkes from Misery look well-adjusted. DeHaan has a boyish face that’s aging into something unique, and Larraín shoots him in a way that makes him look 17 and 45 at the same time.