Kingdom Hospital

Review By: Elizabeth Brady
ElizabethBrady@TheCinemaSource.com

Let’s face it: once you hear the name Stephen King in conjunction with any film project, you get a bit apprehensive. While he is a prolific writer, and he has certainly been involved with a few big winners (i.e. Carrie, The Shining, It), his films/miniseries are also notorious for being all-too-frequently poor quality (think of Tommyknockers and The Stand). The Kingdom Hospital DVD release contains the entire miniseries, which turns out to be not as bad as I had anticipated.

Something about this show gets you hooked right from the start. Director Craig R. Baxley is skilled at keeping the suspense level up and making you curious to find out what happens next - after all, it takes talent to keep an audience focused and interested for 15 hours in a plot that flows around a comatose artist, a paranormal anteater and a bizarre hospital staff. The cast and crew themselves have described the show as “ER on acid,” and “a supernatural black comedy.” If it sounds peculiar, well, it is, but in a good way.

The cast also provides a good backbone to the series. Everyone does an excellent job portraying their specific characters, all of whom blend together to generate one weird hospital - full of psychics, malpracticing doctors, ghosts, murderers, fainting nurses, and a secret society - to name a few. Bruce Davidson is quite convincing as the harsh and arrogant Dr. Stegman, Diane Ladd plays the clairvoyant Sally Druse with ease, and Andrew McCarthy…..well what can I say about him except that he reinforces how life works in mysterious ways: one minute you are young and hot in Pretty in Pink, and the next thing you know 20 years have gone by and you are playing an eccentric middle- aged doctor! But all irony aside, Kingdom Hospital is very well cast.

Sure, there are a good amount of legitimate criticisms to be made. At times, for example, it seems as though the suspense is just dragging on forever, and the end will never come! The mysterious, supernatural twists and turns get so muddled at points that it’s pretty confusing. Also, there are some not-so-subtle similarities to other films/shows which prove to be distracting and somewhat annoying. A lot of the overall mood, the music, and atmosphere from Kingdom Hospital is just too reminiscent of Six Feet Under (somber, dealing with a lot of death and weirdos). There are other blatant influences that shine through too well - Donnie Darko, or any one of a plethora of ghost movies. However, the apparent emulation of these other works for the most part adds to the drama and success of the series.

Many of the usual Stephen King techniques and characteristics are present in Kingdom Hospital. The cheesy and sometimes overly- dramatic dream sequences and spooky encounters, the New England setting, the signature style of suspense that keeps you wondering ...