The other reviewer pretty much nailed it -- if you read the book, this movie will bring you to tears, and the book was never intended to be a tear-jerker. Here is the issue: Hollywood has never, even on its best day, done an especially good job of adapting these sorts of stories. Look at the mess they made with Stephen King (a very odd author who, history may well record, "peaked" in the 1980s -- and no one bothered to tell him). After butchering one King novel after another, after another -- and even trying "cheap movie tricks" like getting the author to adapt his own material, a clear sign of desperation! -- ultimately King's newest stuff ended up in miniseries only, with not even a pretence of making it to the big screen. My point? Well regardless of which author you favour (and Koontz has an army of fans, or, at least, used to) if they could not manage to bring King to the screen, you can only guess what a mess they made of Koontz. This is widely held to be his best work -- a brilliant suspense tail (pun!) that incorporates one of the best "dog" roles ever -- and essentially they shot themselves in the foot before even the first reel was in the camera. Packaged as a B movie, with Corey Haim (?) and Michael Ironside, this film was over before it even began. Don't see this, don't rent it, don't stream it, don't download it and -- depending on what decade or century it is when you access this IMDb entry -- don't even have it beamed directly into your cortex. Read the book.
Review of Watchers
Watchers
(1988)
"best" Koontz film adaption -- and that is NOT a compliment!
26 November 2013
Warning: Spoilers