Stephen King: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

33. Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift stars off well enough. As usual set in King's own home state of Maine, the action centres on the reopening of a decrepit old textile mill. Within the first couple of weeks several employees have met mysterious deaths, with the only thing connecting them being they all worked the graveyard shift. Spooky, right? All of that cool build up gets thrown away the instant foreman Stephen Macht hires a bunch of hobos to clear out the mill's basement, where they discover a labyrinthine series of tunnels beneath the mill which might explain all this disappearances... Because the tunnels are populated by giant bats that come out at night to hunt. But they only hunt within the mill for some reason. And lay dormant until somebody decided to start up the town's textile industry again. It's a ridiculous story that never quite falls into a pulpy guilty pleasure. It's just a bad plot, poorly directed, with terrible performances.