No one who loves movies can "hide" Stephen King.
"Shawshank's Redemption" dominates the top three of various best films all year round. "The Shining" is a classic among horror film classics. His stories have become more than 150 film and television works.
With constant reversals and pervasive horror, Stephen King has become a trademark of guaranteeing the quality of scripts.
At the beginning of the new year, HBO teamed up with "The King of Horror Novels" to bring the latest adaptation of the series-"The Outsider".
This article has spoilers.
1
In the morning, the old man walking the dog is at ease.
In a blink of an eye, he found the body of an 11-year-old boy in the park.
Police Ralph Anderson quickly identified the murderer, Terry Maitland, the most popular English teacher and LLB coach in Flint.
Time pulled back to the day when the boy was killed. With the memories of witnesses, the story began to surface.
The old woman saw Terry let the boy get into her car.
The little girl saw Terry walking out of the forest with a blood stain.
The drug addict bartender saw Terry come to the bar to wash the blood on his body.
Even though the trio’s testimony may be questioned because of their age and identity in the future trial, the physical evidence (fingerprints and DNA) clearly points to the baseball coach everyone loves.
So, in full view, Ralph ordered his men to arrest Terry who was guiding the game.
Subsequently, allegations of rape and dismemberment followed one after another.
A kind coach who likes children VS a horrible murderous maniac. Is this the legendary dual personality criminal?
As a suspenseful story, the culprit is identified at the beginning. What mystery needs to be solved behind it?
Sure enough, a bigger question emerged soon.
Because, on the day the boy was murdered, Terry was not in Flint at all. He spent the whole day attending literary conferences at a hotel 70 miles away.
As a police detective, Ralph thought for the first time that this was Terry's sophistry, or at best some small means of making an alibi.
But in the video of the academic conference released by the media, there is indeed a living Terry himself.
How can a person appear in different places at the same time?
Moreover, if Terry really planned this crime, why would he not shy away from the camera in the process of committing the crime, and deliberately leave his face in public again and again?
This suspicious case is like a deformed Rubik's Cube, leaving experienced detectives at a loss as to how to proceed, but in the face of evidence they cannot come up with reasonable speculations, and justice has also fallen into a deadlock.
2
The police solving the case is actually an outsider, using the perspective of "bystander to clear" the process of uncovering the mystery.
However, in this case of the rape and murder of the boy, detective Ralph does not seem to be a character who can be aloof.
It turns out that Ralph's son Derek died unexpectedly a few years ago, which makes it difficult for Ralph to calmly deal with Terry's case.
After all, the pain of losing a child is a pain that will be unforgettable for a lifetime.
The word "empathy" is not only the advantage of empathy, but also the disadvantage of empathy.
It was this spread of emotion that made Ralph choose to arrest Terry in front of everyone.
Because, under the combined control of individual memories, group emotions, and all kinds of evidence, Ralph there was extremely certain that Terry was the murderer himself.
However, Ralph himself did not expect that from the moment he took Terry away, the whole thing began to be out of control.
The first to suffer was Terry's family.
Since this five-good teacher became a murderous madman, it was difficult for Terry's wife and daughters to be treated fairly.
The little girl had nightmares every night, arguing that there would always be a man at home at night.
The "murderer" has a hard time at home, and the victim's home is a mess.
The mother who lost her youngest son went mad at home, suffered a cardiac arrest, and died.
After the mother's funeral, the eldest son came to the scene where Terry appeared in court with a gun, and when he hit Terry, he was directly killed.
Faced with the family where his wife was scattered, in the end, his father chose to hang himself.
Two originally happy families, in just a few days, went through life and death, and even extinction. Ralph, who was stunned by resentment, finally awakened and he had to investigate from the beginning.
This time, the private detective Holly Gibney joined, and she narrated the mysterious phenomenon that Ralph disapproved of, and the truth seemed to be slowly presented in the direction of these speculations.
Because viewers with an omniscient perspective have seen that every time a tragedy occurs, there is always a figure wearing a hoodie standing quietly not far away, observing every detail related to the case as an outsider.
Justice is in the light, and evil is in the dark.
Obviously, this contest has just begun.
3
Long before it aired, "The Outsider" had been included in the "Annual Most Anticipated American Drama List" by many foreign media.
In addition to Stephen King’s involvement in script creation, Richard Price, the lead screenwriter, is also a powerful character. His "Wire of Fire", "Legend of Fallen Street" and "Running on the Night" are all "9+". Divided into good drama, word of mouth has not fallen.
At the same time, Jason Bateman and Andrew Bernstein, who once co-directed "The Place of Dark Money", collaborated again, which also added a lot of insurance to the quality of the film of "The Outsider."
The dark and cold town, the mysterious shadow, and the girl with constant nightmares all come from the ingenious arrangement of the two.
Except for occasionally using too much force and deliberately weakening the ambient light to cause a black screen to watch the movie, the two directors are wholeheartedly laying out a kind of horror atmosphere that runs through the whole film.
What's interesting is that this "Outsider" with top-notch configuration and high-detailed details is not actually a hit drama.
Compared with other popular dramas, the scores of "The Outsider" are like a progressive young man slowly climbing.
To a large extent, this situation is caused by the reversal charm of the series.
From common homicides in film and television dramas that easily cause aesthetic fatigue, to unexplainable alibi problems, this is the first reversal.
Paradoxical case puzzles, with this "dead knot" to suffocate the appetite of the audience.
Subsequently, it is not difficult to guess the direction of the novel. When the identity of the mysterious visitor in the hoodie is exposed, the attitude of the residents of the small town towards the mysterious phenomenon will lead the plot to another climax.
Of course, just like Newton looking for answers from God, the answer given by "The Outsider" may not be the optimal solution for reasoning enthusiasts, but if you juxtapose it with social reasoning, you can see the human nature behind a puzzle. Defects and various social attitudes can also be regarded as another acceptable high-level expression.
Just as the French writer Camus wrote in another well-known literary "The Outsider", "Everything is true, and nothing is true!"
Being interpreted thousands of times is the destiny of the story, and being misunderstood countless times is the destiny of the truth.
Following this path of finding the truth, Ralph, who reinvestigated the case as a police officer, is an outsider in the murder of the boy; the man in a hoodie who observes the case from the perspective of a bystander is an outsider in the panic atmosphere of the small town.
However, after all, people cannot avoid the connection with society. Outsiders can be the standard of distance and closeness, but they cannot use morality and law as an excuse.
In the middle of the bureau, there is a case in the middle of the case, and once you are in it, there is no one who is a real outsider.
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