The Institute review – this is how you butcher a Stephen King novel

The Guardian

6 days ago

Me, I'm always in the mood for hokum. You can serve it to me at any point on the largest platter you have and I will grab my hooey knife and absurdity fork and start shovelling. But, like any chef, you have to know what you're doing. You have to make some effort, have the basic ingredients assembled in the right proportions and send it out from the kitchen hot, steaming and looking delicious. Tepid hokum, bland hokum – well, that ain't no hokum at all.
And so to the latest Stephen King adaptation, this time by Benjamin Cavell and directed by Jack Bender (Lost, From, Under the Dome – the latter another King tale) of the horror master's 2019 novel The Institute, travelling to our screens under the same name.
Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman, the son of Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington, in his first major role and bringing much to a part that barely wants to allow anything) is a super smart 14-year-old, planning a move to MIT when he is snatched from his home one night and relocated to a shadowy government facility (the institute) deep in the forests of Maine to assist with unspecified but – he is assured – world-saving work. Not just because of his IQ but because of the nascent telekinetic powers he also possesses. What were the odds!
You can probably take it from here, but let me do my professional duty. The institute houses an array of youngsters who have demonstrated either telekinetic (TK) or telepathic (TP) abilities in their ordinary lives. No one, as yet, has demonstrated both, and none has our spiky hero's gift for analysing everything around him and showing the grownups how incredible kids can be, yeah?
Kalisha (Simone Miller) is a TP and keeps kissing Luke – I am not too clear why, but it has something to do with her having had chickenpox, maybe, and wanting to pass it on? God knows. George (Arlen So) is a TK and gets to use up the first episode's nugatory SFX budget by raising a pool of spilt water into the air as a glistening vertical stream. Nicky (Fionn Laird) is a slightly older inmate who grew up in foster care and is – quite loudly, for such a heavily surveilled facility – sceptical of the authorities' insistence that the children will have their memories wiped at the end of all this and be returned safely to their unquestioning parents. This is probably wise.
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Said authorities comprise Ms Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker, playing icily against type) who cares not a jot for her young charges beyond what they can do to further the mysterious project. Behind the professional facade, she has a self-harm habit and a father with dementia – but, if this is meant to make her less of a cipher than any of the other characters being moved around the cheap, uninspiring sets, it does not work. Ditto the bleak affair she is having with Dr Hendricks (Robert Joy), who is in charge of the research and experimentation programme. Rounding out the staff are Stackhouse (Julian Richings, who is British and bony-faced, so you know he is the real villain of the piece) and the sadistic Tony (Jason Diaz), who actually carries out the tagging, drugging and restraining of the institute's young captives/lab rats that Hendricks' programme requires.
Outside the facility is the B plot. Good cop and even better guy Tim (Ben Barnes, bringing, like Freeman, the most he can to an unrewarding part) has taken a job with local police as a night knocker (a patrolman who makes sure everything's locked up and calm) to recover from the trauma of being forced to shoot an armed 16-year-old back in the city. A strange lady keeps warning him about mysteries and untrustworthy townsfolk, but I wonder if anyone will ever take heed and start to wonder what goes on in the heavily fortified concrete building buried in the woods on the outskirts of town?
And with that, and the promise that Tim will (eventually – it takes far too long) intersect with the main narrative, the last basic King box is ticked and we can see exactly what happens when you keep the plot but strip out the man's genius for bringing his characters to life, while building dread at a cellular level. Instead, we get what looks like the torture of children to shock and upset, with some gratuitous references to the Holocaust to make things worse. If you stripped those out and upped the pace, The Institute might have made for some perfectly serviceable fun for the early-adolescent demographic. As things stand, it's hardly fun at all.
The Institute is on MGM+ on Prime Video in the UK and US, and on Stan in Australia.