A Stephen King Adaptation That Doesn’t Believe in Monsters
<em>The Outsider</em>, HBO's new 10-part series about an inexplicable murder in a small Georgia town, misses the uncanny intrigue.
Of all the scenes laid out over the first six hours of The Outsider, a new HBO adaptation debuting Sunday of the 2018 Stephen King novel, nothing quite matches the chills of the very first scene. Slowly, scored by piano music, drone shots capture a generic American landscape: churches and intersections, cherry blossoms and abandoned railroads. When the camera reaches ground level, it follows a man walking his dog through a parking lot and dips underneath a van; as it reemerges on the other side of the vehicle, it reveals that blood has seeped out from the passenger-side door.
The moment is potent not and .
