Throughout the '90s, the Stephen King event miniseries was a mainstay of network television. Since adaptations of King's work have recently seen a resurgence, I don't think it's any surprise that someone chose to make a miniseries of "Lisey's Story," one of King's more personal books. It's a thinly veiled thought experiment, musing over what a famous horror writer's wife might have to deal with emotionally and psychically after the death of her husband. Because this is an Apple+ project, the talent involved is all top shelf - Pablo Larrain directs, King himself wrote the screenplay, and the cast is downright amazing. So,I'm not sure how the eight-episode miniseries wound up being so much more difficult to watch and to parse than it should have been.
The story is told achronologically. For the most part it follows Lisey Landon (Julianne Moore) two years after the death of her husband Scott (Clive Owen), a famous author. She's put off dealing with his legacy, despite being hounded by a professor, Roger Dashmiel (Ron Cephas Jones), to get access to Scott's files. He recruits a disturbed superfan, Jim Dooley (Dane DeHaan) to help persuade her. At the same time, Lisey's sister Amanda (Joan Allen) suffers a psychotic break that forces Lisey to confront her past and her relationships with Amanda and their other sister Darla (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She's also sent on a "bool hunt," a treasure hunt set up by Scott, that leads her through the more disturbing parts of his life. Scott and his older brother had a fantasy world they shared as children called Booya Moon - and he might be trying to lead Lisey there from beyond death.
There are several stories being told in "Lisey's Story" that overlap considerably, but don't quite all exist in the same space comfortably. First, there's the fairly realistic story of Lisey and Scott's marriage, and Lisey going through the grieving process. Then there's the fantasy tinged, violent memoir of Scott's miserable childhood with an abusive father (Michael Pitt) and troubled brother, Paul (Clark Furlong). Then there's the escalating situation with the disturbed Jim Dooley, which plays out like a more melodramatic brand of crime drama. Most of the episodes from the past happen in the context of Lisey's reminiscences, as she tries to puzzle through various mysteries. There's a lot of slow meandering from scene to scene, and an infuriating amount of repetition as she connects the dots. While the series looks absolutely gorgeous, with cinematography from Darius Khondji, parts of it are a real slog. And because this is a series and not a film, it's multiple episodes of slog that wear out their welcome quickly.
This is a shame, because "Lisey" does a lot of things right. The cast is perfect, with Moore and Owen demonstrating that they still have plenty of chemistry together, and Michael Pitt is terrifying every time he appears, making the scenes of Scott's brutal childhood nailbitingly tense. Fantasy elements are often difficult to integrate into a show that tackles such heavy subject matter like this, but Larrain and company pull it off. Booya Moon is this spooky twilight world that exists in a metaphysical space between life and death, and manages to be exactly as creepy and magical as it should be. I also generally enjoy Larrain's style, and there are noticeable echoes of "Jackie" in "Lisey," including this lovely, moody atmosphere of nostalgia and regret.
But what leaves me unsatisfied in the end is that Lisey feels like such a flimsy character. It might be "Lisey's Story," but it's really about Lisey only as far as how she relates to Scott, the obvious stand-in for Stephen King. Her relationships with her sisters are shown to be very important to her, but don't get much development. You can view the narrative as the result of Lisey fixating on her dead husband at the expense of her own personhood, but it's much too late in the series before we really get any sense of who Lisey was before Scott, and who she could be after.
Compared to the Stephen King miniseries of yore, I vastly prefer a prestige project like this instead of the campy old chillers like "The Tommyknockers" or "Rose Red." However, "Lisey's Story" could have been something much more interesting that what it is - a flawed, difficult curiosity.
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