Stephen King's Desperation (2006)
Mick Garris' two hour tv movie of the 1996 Stephen King novel (Who actually wrote the screenplay himself) is a hugely enjoyable horror thriller.
Helped by a good cast - Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt, Annabeth Gish, Steven Weber and Charles Durning - the film tells the story of a disparate group of people who end up locked in jail in the same backwater police station by grizzled sheriff Perlman.
I was pretty much gripped from the opening scenes and my interest never wavered. I felt the film had echoes of the superb King mini series Storm of the Century (1999) with it's settings and possession premise whilst still being entirely it's own entity whilst director Garris keeps the action flowing smoothly.
There are some reasonably gory sequences and stand out parts such as what seem like hundreds of possessed animals sat at the side of the road in almost guard of honor style will stick in the memory.
By the way, the backwater town is called Desperation, but it also describes the situation for the jailbirds.
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