Needful Things

Better than most Stephen King adaptations, mainly because an exceptionally strong cast adds substance to the facile storyline about a mysterious stranger, Leland Gaunt (von Sydow), who opens the antique shop of the title in Castle Rock, Maine, and, by tapping into the inhabitants' acquisitive desires, sets them at one another's throats. As Fraser C Heston has observed, there are no supernatural beings here - the only monster is avarice. Little more than an EC Comics-style morality tale about the greedy getting their comeuppance, but the director has a strong eye for visual detail and expansive composition.