Bag of Bones (2011)

Traveling to a lake-front mansion to get over his wife's death, a distraught writer finds that her ghost is using him to help a local woman battle an evil land-owner who's evil secret goes back to the town's infamous haunting involving numerous disappearances to cover up the original tragedy.Taking the new miniseries as a whole, this one definitely feels just like every other Stephen King story: an isolated Maine town, elders having a deadly secret who the locals are afraid of, lots of melodrama instead of horror with only brief forays into the style to trick us into thinking that's what it really is, and far too many scenes outside the style that just eats up so much time that this could very easily be paired down by well over an hour without taking away anything of any importance in the storyline. The scares are pedestrian and seem to consist of the same thing, a wrinkly ghost-like woman appearing out of nowhere, which gets old very quickly and really hampers this one overall. It's still typical King so it's just mediocre and not unwatchable.Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence, Language and children-in-jeopardy.

The bestseller writer Mike Noonan (Pierce Brosnan) is autographing his new release in a bookstore and his beloved wife, the painter Jo Noonan (Annabeth Gish), goes to a store on the other side of the street to buy a pregnant test. When she is crossing the street back to the bookstore, a bus run over her and she does not survive. Mike grieves the loss of his wife and decides to go to the house by the Dark Score Lake, in Maine, that he had inherited from his grandfather and Jo had spent a long time repairing it. Mike starts to drink and suspects that Jo might have betrayed him since his sperm counting indicates that he is sterile. In the isolated house, Mike has nightmares and believes that Jo is trying to contact him. He also has daydreams and ghostly visions with the jazz singer Sara Tidwell (Anika Noni Rose) in a local fair in 1939. Mike stumbles in the town with Mattie (Melissa George) and her daughter Kyra Devore (Caitlin Carmichael) and he discovers that the powerful and mean Max Devore (William Schallert) is disputing the custody of his granddaughter Kyra with Mattie. Further he discovers that there is a curse in Dark Score Lake due a despicable action of Max in 1939. Mike decides to help Mattie against Max and to investigate further the mysterious curse."Bag of Bones" is a dark tale of evilness and curse in a town in Maine. The supernatural story is very well constructed along 157 minutes running time and is a combination of drama, thriller and horror. I did not read the novel by Stephen King but I liked this TV mini-series. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Saco de Ossos" ("Bag of Bones")

I watched this in its movie version, having not read the book but love the horror genre, and it just doesn't work. Lots of plot holes, too many characters, its just all a bit too confused. I should have known from the beginning. When Mike's wife goes to get lunch (and buy a pregnancy test, of course) he's doing a book signing and hears sirens. He then gets up, walks past the queue (none of them seem to mind) and outside to his wife, whom he just 'knew' was there. While she is taking her last breaths, the ambulance crew is in the background with a stretcher. No attempts to resusitate or ascertain the extent of her injuries, they just watch. Hence the 'oh dear' from which I didn't feel the film redeemed itself.

Writer Mike Noonan, trying to overcome writer's block following the accidental death of his wife, falls in with some oddnesses on going to the old family lake house.I read Bag Of Bones on publication (the first novel after Stephen King's near-fatal accident, it was touted untruthfully as his final novel - this turned out to be inspired press in tieing the predicament of the main character to the personal circumstances of the author. I thoroughly enjoyed it: time constraints have prevented me from re-reading, so much of the detail of the novel has slipped from my memory. This miniseries therefore arrives fairly fresh and I shan't be comparing it to the book.It's OK. There is nothing exceptionally good about it, nor anything exceptionally bad - it is simply a generic ghost story, mildly horrific, but with most of the scares coming from sudden shock moments. I can't warn viewers away from it: neither can I recommend it.Director Mick Garris has had a lot of stabs at directing Stephen King stories - at least 7 by my count - and at best they have been adequate. Would that he could take a leaf out of Frank Darabont's book, with a success rate of 3 out of 3 so far.