one of the films who seduce for its cast. the story remains only a sketch useful for desire to read the book. film of Max von Sydow, it has the basic sin to be superficial. or a kind of run for say, in short form, a complex story about temptation and heavy sins. nothing wrong in essence but too strange for understand the force of original. a Stephen King has the gift to be interesting in each adaptation because the mark of writer is unique but the mark is only the first step. in this case, a sketch without great ambitions is not the best way for translate the powerful images from novel in a credible film. but, it is a film for the cast. Amanda Plummer and Max von Sydow are two strong arguments.

An adaptation of the only Stephen King novel I've ever finished (the only other one I started - and gave up on - is The Tommyknockers), Needful Things stars Max von Sydow as the Devil. He opens a new shop in the town of Castle Rock, selling people's deepest desire for them on the cheap. Well, not really. The asking price is always some bit of mischief that ends up turning neighbors against each other until they're ready to murder. From what I gather, this isn't one of King's better novels. I remember quite enjoying it back in the day, or at least it being a quick, fun read despite its excessive length. The film version hews fairly close, as far as I recall. It's overlong for what it is and it starts off a bit slow. It has several really good scenes and the cast is mostly very good. Von Sydow is a lot of fun as Leland Gaunt. Ed Harris stars as the sheriff and Amanda Plummer is memorable as one of the first citizens to go off the rail. Other good performances include those of Ray McKinnon and JT Walsh.

It's the small coastal town of Castle Rock. Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) comes to open a store called Needful Things. He has some of the most evil Things to sell and he keeps a record of sales in his little book. Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris) asks diner owner Polly Chalmers (Bonnie Bedelia) to marry him. Nettie Cobb (Amanda Plummer) is the waitress at the diner. Danforth Keeton III (J.T. Walsh) is the bullying businessman.This town is full of weirdly unlikeable characters. It doesn't seem to be where the movie should start with. It would be much better to have an idyllic town on the surface and the objects would bring out the ugliness. The town starts off ugly. Also the story seems set up for a serial TV show where each object can be its own episode. This movie has only one thing going for it and that's Max von Sydow. It's a movie about the villain more than any other character. That leaves the movie repeating the same tone over and over again. There isn't any surprises and there isn't any excitement. It's a very boring movie.

There was a time I used to force myself to read Stephen King books at night in the dark with no one else in the house just to see if I could do it. 'It' was the creepiest and 'The Shining' was a close second, but 'Needful Things' was a pretty good contender even if it wasn't an outright horror story. I survived those days pretty well, so now I'm watching this flick in the dark, by myself, and it manages to block out the creaky noises in the rest of the apartment. So far, so good.I was a little surprised to see the amount of negative reviews for this picture by other reviewers on this board. A lot of them have to do with not following King's novel all that closely, but it's been so long since I read it that it doesn't make much difference to me now. The one thing I remember though has to do with the baseball card; in the book I think it was Koufax, not Mantle. I could be wrong, but when the scene came up I was expecting a Sandy Koufax card, so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, maybe not. Perhaps some day I'll check it out to be sure.The interesting thing about this story was the way old Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) got all the folks in Castle Rock to turn on each other by not pitting likely adversaries against one another. Sort of like a domino effect where one unsuspecting citizen tripped up the next one in line with more and more disastrous results. The backdrop of the curiosity shop was a cool one for me because I like antiques and old things myself. The collecting urge isn't there any more though, so chances are I would have been a casual observer with all the insanity going on.There was some good casting here besides Sydow who appeared to be having a devil of a time. I enjoy Ed Harris and Bonnie Bedelia in most any other movie I've seen them in, but I have to say, Amanda Plummer as Nettie and Valri Bromfield as Wilma were perfect for their roles. Their vicious tete a tete with the strains of 'Ave Maria' in the background was an inspired piece of work. Even old Raider managed to do a good job with his limited involvement. If you stuck around to catch the full credit roll, you'll notice that he was portrayed in the movie by a canine named K-Jin. Stuff like that just interests me to no end.