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Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs  Apt Pupil (1998)
Taken from Stephen King's classic 1982 anthology Different Seasons, this is a er' different beast altogether taking in the subject of a teenager's obsession with the Holocaust and his friendship with an old gentlemen living in his town who is hiding out from his past as a Nazi war criminal.
Though not a horror film director Bryan Singer brings a horrific subject to the fore and the subject matter becomes occasionally unsettling viewing, in fact i found some sequences more questionable than i did the whole of Von Trier's The House that Jack Built.
Ian McKellen is superb as the former SS death camp officer but i found fellow lead, Brad Renfro, as the teen to be annoying and this dragged the whole of the film down a level for me.
For some reason i associate this with King's other tale of a boy befriending an old man on the run - Hearts In Atlantis, which i think is a far more satisfying movie altogether. |
You've probably already read it but I highly recommend the novella that this film was based upon. If you've not it's in the Different Seasons book along with Shawshank and the story Stand by Me was based on, The Body.