10 Horrifyingly Underrated Stephen King Adaptations

6. The Langoliers

Tommyknockers Stephen King
ABC

What The Critics Said:

After the show first aired Entertainment Weekly described the miniseries as being ‘an episode of The Twilight Zone stretched out to four hours’. Not exactly high praise.

Why It’s Worth A Watch:

The strongest entry in his Four Past Midnight novella collection got the miniseries treatment back at the tail end of the nineties in what is largely an atmospheric, strongly-acted affair.

The premise is pure King – sleeping passengers on a plane wake up as the lone survivors realising the rest of their awake journey-mates have disappeared – and Fright Night helmer Tom Holland does an expert job of building up the tension as these bewildered travellers touch ground in a deserted airport, discovering something horrifying is afoot.

This culminates in one of the most ‘eh?’ finales King has ever imagined (CG meatballs!) but somehow it all works. Props should also go to towering thesp David Morse, who anchors this series.

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Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing. He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.