Many Stephen King detractors criticize his work based on glossing over the surface. The surface of his work includes monsters, pop culture references, and bloody deaths. Frankly, I think that many of these people assume that King’s work is garbage because he is popular, all hype and no substance. Of course there’s plenty of hype, as there would be with any best-selling author. With King, the hype is undeniable but there is substance too. A significant part of his substance is found where it really counts: his characters.

King understands that true horror, the heart of it all, lies beyond blood or monsters. Creatures and entrails are only components. True horror lies in tragedy. The only way for a death to feel tragic and not just another number in a kill count is to make the character real. You’re only invested in the characters if they feel like real people. If you’re invested, the character’s death will rip out your heart. King is a master with creating characters like this.

I’ve been on a King kick lately, reading his work and watching film adaptations. Each movie I’ve watched is entertaining in its own way but each of them is memorable, in part, due to a tragic death in the storyline.

The first movie that comes to mind is Pet Sematary. If you’re not familiar with the storyline, a father, Louis Creed, and his family moves out to Maine near an Indian burial ground that can revivify the dead with sinister results. Critically speaking, the movie was not incredibly successful but it is powerful nonetheless. The scene where Louis’s son, little Gage, is killed by a truck driver is shattering. Seeing Louis’s pain as the realization of what happened unfolds to him is all too clear to me. I am a father of a 13 month old, who is just learning to walk. Seeing Creed’s little boy wander onto the road scares the hell out of me because what happened to him could him to any toddler. I could only imagine that Creed lost his mind and I would too. I’m only a viewer. I know that Creed interring his son in the Micmac burial ground will only multiply the horrors to come, but I’m not Louis Creed. What happens is not so much predictable as it is inevitable.

The second selection is the new adaptation of It. Seven children brought together to face an ancient evil. One of them is Bill, whose little brother Georgie was killed by the entity Pennywise. Georgie’s death was hard to watch, harder than I imagined it would have been. As a dad, have a more paternal outlook on kids and Georgie was a sweet adorable boy. Seeing Bill and his father grieve drove it home that something innocent was cruelly stolen away forever.

The last selection was The Dead Zone. The tragedy behind this story doesn’t involve an innocent child, but it was the story that hooked me to read Stephen King in the first place back in 2001. Johnny Smith crashes in a wreck, resulting in a coma. He awakes with his life uprooted but resulted in endowing him with a psychic ability to see into the past, present, or future of those he comes into contact with. Throughout the movie, he uses his power to help people although it gradually destroys him. When he sees into the future of a man who will be responsible for the deaths of millions of people, Johnny sacrifices himself by trying to assassinate him. The tragedy comes with the unraveling and destruction of a good man in a world with too many problems for him to solve on his own.

The heart of horror is in humanity. The heart of great literature as a whole involves tapping into those elements of life that make us understand other people. With horror, we see the dark side of humanity but we also see some of the things that make us decent and formidable against the forces of evil. King takes ordinary people like we see in these stories and gives them the chance to become victims or heroes. There are several triumphs in King’s work, we see one in It as well as The Dead Zone albeit with great loss. In Pet Sematary, Louis Creed and his family become victims. It is a story with nothing but tragedy and is the most heart-wrenching of this trio. At any rate, these characters speak to me. If you aren’t a fan of King, at least try these movies. I think they will speak to you as well.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo

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