Castle Rock: The Complete First Season is a fun and entertaining show and that’s coming from someone who generally isn’t the biggest fan of Stephen King; however as a movie buff, there are cool references to some of the King-adapted feature films.
Castle Rock: The Complete First Season
(2018)
Genre(s): Drama, Suspense, Mystery
Warner Bros. | NR – 500 min. – $44.98 | January 8, 2019
Date Published: 01/09/2019 | Author: The Movieman
|
|
|||||||||||
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 3.75/5 |
|
Season Synopsis: A psychological-horror series set in the Stephen King multiverse, Castle Rock combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King’s best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. The fictional Maine town of Castle Rock has figured prominently in King’s literary career: ‘Cujo’, ‘The Dark Half’, ‘IT’ and ‘Needful Things’, as well as novella ‘The Body’ and numerous short stories such as Rita Hayworth and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ are either set there or contain references to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is an original suspense/thriller – a first-of-its-kind reimagining that explores the themes and worlds uniting the entire King canon, while brushing up against some of his most iconic and beloved stories.
Quick Hit Review: I’ll be upfront, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Stephen King though have enjoyed a few adaptations of his novels including The Shining, Misery and The Mist. Castle Rock is an anthology series collecting various characters from King’s novels and was produced by J.J. Abrams. I think for big fans of King, this series might be a blast with iconic settings and characters such as one of the main locations, Shawshank State Prison, and of course the series takes place in Maine, as most (with few exceptions) of King’s novels do. While I’m not an avid King reader, Castle Rock is still a fascinating and ultimately engaging drama-thriller with some top-notch performances from the likes of (newcomer to me) Andre Holland, Bill Skarsgard and the lovely Jane Levy, whose character, Jackie, is the niece of one Jack Torrance from The Shining. Not going to say this is mind-blowingly great, but it is certainly watchable and with only 10 episodes, can be done over a weekend. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 3.75/5 |
|
The 4-discs are housed in an HD keep case which side slides into a glossy slip cover. Inside is a redemption code for the Digital HD copy. Inside the Episodes – Each episode of the series has a short featurette with interviews by creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason discussing the events of that episode. Castle Rock: Blood on the Page (19:40; HD) explores the methods Stephen King utilizes in his works and how these techniques inspire the Castle Rock mythology. Clockwork of Horror (4:51) looks at how the writers of Castle Rock merge the distinct styles of Stephen King and J.J. Abrams into a tale of mystery and horror. |
4K VIDEO – 4.5/5, BD VIDEO – 4.25/5 |
| Warner Bros. releases Castle Rock on 4K UHD and Blu-ray presented with a 2.00 widescreen aspect ratio as originally streamed on Netflix. The 2160p high-definition transfer (1080p on Blu-ray) looks pretty good albeit I can’t go as far to say it’s stunning, though detail is fairly sharp, black levels are stark and while there aren’t incredible colors, in keeping with the darker tone of the series, there is some brightness with a boost by the HDR10. The Blu-ray itself also doesn’t look at all bad, detail is maybe ever so slightly less defined but otherwise it is still a nice presentation. |
AUDIO – 4.25/5 |
| Both the 4K UHD and Blu-ray comes with a standard DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which is more than serviceable showing off crisp and clean dialogue levels and there is a modest amount of depth outputting from the rear channel. It’s nothing incredible yet does still sound quite nice even if it’s not a track that will give one’s surround system much of a workout. |
OVERALL – 4.0/5 |
|
Overall, Castle Rock: The Complete First Season is a fun and entertaining show and that’s coming from someone who generally isn’t the biggest fan of Stephen King; however as a movie buff, there are cool references to some of the King-adapted feature films. This 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo pack has good video and audio transfers and a solid selection of bonus features. |
The screen captures came from the Blu-ray copy and are here to add visuals to the review and do not represent the 4K video.