Joey Magidson
The Sunday Scaries are upon us once again! Yes, as the weekend concludes, most of us feel an oncoming sense of anticipatory dread about the week ahead. Anxiety about work manifests itself into a feeling that’s known as the Sunday Scaries. However, we at Awards Radar are here to combat that, by taking back the name. Now, we want you think about a horror-centric piece on the site when you hear the term. So, let us continue on with another installment of the Awards Radar Sunday Scaries! This time around, we’re celebrating the year that a legendary horror writer’s adaptations have been having…
It’s good to be a Stephen King adaptation in 2025. This year alone has brought three critically acclaimed and very different works to the screen in The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk, and The Monkey. One pure horror film. One life affirming tale. One dark look at society. These three movies offer up the many sides of King, so it’s exciting to be a lover of his work, of which there are obviously legion.
This run actually started exactly a year ago when The Life of Chuck took the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Winning that Audience Award at TIFF is incredibly prestigeious and almost led to the flick coming out late last year, though NEON wisely held it. Now, it’s hoping to remain an Oscar contender as awards season starts up pretty soon. So, the tail end of 2024 even had some positive King vibes brewing, cinematically speaking.
Earlier this year, The Monkey kicked off 2025 with a bang. Osgood Perkins expands on a King short story to gory and hilarious effect. In terms of horror/horror comedy, it’s really an upper echelon King adaptation. I’d loved Longlegs, so I was excited to see what Perkins was up to next, but this was a wonderful shock, even for me.
My incredibly positive review here kicks off with the following:
When you get on a film’s wavelength, no matter what kind of a work it is, there’s a feeling that’s hard to beat. Especially when it’s an out there horror movie, you’re so attuned to the possibilities, anything that happens is a delight. In the case of The Monkey, the opening scene so perfectly sets you up for what’s to come, that you’re just excited to be along for the ride. This flick is such a good time, savagely funny and savagely gory in equal measure, it’s one of the best horror comedies in some time. 2025 is off to a hell of a year, horror wise.
The Monkey is incredibly different from Longlegs, the prior film from Osgood Perkins, but it’s just as clearly evidence that he’s a master of horror. This shows that he can go funny, which is a new exercise for the filmmaker. It’s a movie with a real devilish sense of humor. Sure, some folks may not be able to vibe with what he’s doing, but if you love horror, as well as genre works on the whole, this is an absolute riot that will shock you in all of the best ways.
Back to The Life of Chuck. Hitting as hard as anything ever penned by King, despite being smaller scaled, Mike Flanagan finds a way to have it give off vibes that resemble The Shawshank Redemption. That’s high praise especially from me, considering that’s my favorite film of all time. This movie? Too early to say where it’ll rank, but I know I’ll probably never stop thinking about it, and that counts for something.
My out and out rave review here included the following:
A movie like The Life of Chuck doesn’t come along very often. Films can do all sorts of things, but it’s the rare work that can be a balm for your soul. Mike Flanagan, working off of the Stephen King source material, has achieved this feat. In the tradition of Frank Darabont, Flanagan has taken King’s non-horror output and made an instant classic. A double feature between this and The Shawshank Redemption would not be out of place. Not only is this film one of the best I’ve seen in some time, easily the best of 2025 so far, it’s potentially an all-timer. The flick just packs that much of a wallop.
The Life of Chuck absolutely bowled me over. Taking an incredibly simple message and premise, one we all too often forget, and expanding it out to cosmic and universal proportions is stunning to witness. Flanagan engages just about every emotion one can have while engaging with cinema. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most fulfilling films to come along in a great long while. It’s the type of movie that may actually save lives, that’s how important it could become to viewers that let it in.
Now, this weekend brought The Long Walk, which comes from one of the earliest King works. It may be a step down from the other two flicks, but those are all but locks for my year end top ten list. This still represents a very effective adaptation and continues to show how his social commentary remains as timely as ever.
My review here from just a few days ago began like so:
When you find out that The Long Walk is adapted from one of the earliest works of Stephen King, you’d be forgiven for worrying that Hollywood has started scraping the bottom of the barrel. Luckily, that’s hardly the case, and if this film isn’t the masterpiece that is The Life of Chuck, or the batshit crazy fun that is The Monkey, it’s very much a compelling piece of cinema. Is the movie a tough watch? Yes. Is that the point? Also yes.
The Long Walk takes a premise that does not sound very cinematic and makes it almost hypnotic. Despite the static nature of what’s going on, you keep getting more and more drawn in, to the point where the ending almost feels abrupt, even with how punishing getting there has been for the characters. The experience is not especially fun, to be fair, but it’s the sort of flick you definitely want to think about once it ends. This one lingers, folks.
So, it’s clearly a good time to be a King fan. Will the future be as bright? We have The Running Man from Edgar Wright up next, plus supposedly Cujo from Darren Aronofsky. So, the potential is there. Either way, celebrate what 2025 has given us, as that’s a very special trio of films that we’ve been given.
Stay tuned for another Sunday Scaries installment next week!
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