Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Castle Rock: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

The Upside Down of Stephen King

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 15, 2019

The Hulu original series Castle Rock may be the most elaborate piece of fan fiction ever created. The series is a tribute to the works of Stephen King, and it attempts to construct a story, and several stories within that story, in the style of King and with countless references to his immense body of work. But—and this is a big "but"—Castle Rock's creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason have set themselves an even more ambitious challenge. They want to marry King's distinctive style of storytelling with the "mystery box" approach to narrative popularized by J.J. Abrams and epitomized in such open-ended tales as Lost—and it's a rocky marriage. King's imagination has yielded some wild notions, but he has always been a disciplined craftsman of traditional narrative fiction with a clear beginning, middle and end. Abrams is the opposite. If he had his way, every story would be open-ended. No one would ever find out what's inside the "mystery box", even after characters have spent years—and viewers have invested countless hours—in trying to open it.

Hulu released the ten-episode first season of Castle Rock on July 25, 2018, and a second season was ordered the following month. Warner is the distributor and has released the series on Blu-ray and 4K UHD.

Castle Rock is set in the fictional Maine town that is the location for numerous King tales. Multiple characters and places are based on King originals, and the setting is loaded with King references both great and small. (My personal favorite is the ice cream shop named "Claiborne Creamery".) Much of the action revolves around Shawshank Penitentiary, which at this point is no longer a state-run facility but is now managed by a private corporation. The larger story of Season One is set in motion by the violent death of the prison's warden, Dale Lacy (Terry O'Quinn), which leads to the shocking discovery of a heretofore unknown prisoner housed in a disused section of the prison. With no name or record, the prisoner is identified in the credits only as "The Kid", and he looks harmless enough, except for the fixed intensity of his stare. In one of the series' more indirect King references, The Kid is played by Bill Skarsgård, who most recently brought the monstrous clown Pennywise to life in the feature film adaptation of It. In Castle Rock, Skarsgård doesn't have the benefit of nightmarish clown makeup—but he's just as creepy.

For a very long time, The Kid says no more than two words, "Henry Deaver", and that name brings us to the second part of Season One's larger mythology. Henry Deaver (André Holland) is a criminal attorney currently practicing in Texas, where his clientele consists mostly of death row inmates, but he grew up in Castle Rock, one of its few African-American residents and the foster son of Rev. Henry Deaver (Adam Rothenberg) and his wife, Ruth (the magnificent Sissy Spacek in present day and her daughter, Schuyler Fisk, in flashbacks). As a boy, Henry became a local legend, and something of a pariah, when he disappeared for two weeks before being found shivering on the frozen surface of Castle Lake. The Rev. Deaver had already been discovered at the bottom of a cliff bordering the lake, with grievous injuries from which he never recovered. Henry was suspected of pushing his foster father over the cliff's edge, but he had no memory of events, and his condition indicated that he'd been held captive somewhere indoors. Is there any significance to the fact that it was Sheriff Alan Pangborn who found Henry, given Pangborn's not-so-secret adulterous love for Ruth Deaver? Indeed, when the adult Henry is summoned back to Castle Rock to represent The Kid, he finds the former Sheriff living with his mother and gently caring for Ruth as she slips into dementia. (The young Pangborn is played by Jeffrey Pierce, and the present-day version by a grizzled Scott Glenn. The name "Alan Pangborn" will be familiar to fans of Needful Things.)

Emotions run high in Castle Rock when Henry Deaver returns, including in Henry himself. The summons is a mystery. Who called the lawyer in Texas and enticed him to provide The Kid with professional representation, to the intense annoyance of the new warden, Porter (Anne Cusack), who wants to hush up the scandal? It takes Henry little time to discover that the call came from a deeply troubled Shawshank guard, Dennis (Noel Fisher), who initially discovered The Kid and for whom the mysterious prisoner holds an unsettling fascination. Henry's return is troubling for special reasons to his childhood friend and neighbor, Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey), who is trying to jumpstart her real estate firm by persuading prospective purchasers that Castle Rock is on the cusp of a revival—although you'd never know it from the town's abandoned factories and threadbare main street. Melanie is cursed with the sort of inexplicable telepathic abilities that are a recurrent element in King's fiction, and her connection to Henry is especially strong. As a result, she knows more than the rest of the town about the attorney's troubled life as a child in the Deaver home, and his return awakens both painful memories and inexplicable visions. Henry's reappearance is also of great interest to Molly's occasional employee, Jackie Torrance (Jane Levy), an aspiring writer fascinated by Castle Rock's strange history. (And yes, she's directly related to that Jack Torrance.)

Many of Season One's mysteries revolve around a strange and ear-splitting sound that only Henry, The Kid and Melanie can hear. The late Rev. Deaver heard it too, and he believed it was the voice of God, speaking to him from somewhere deep in the surrounding forest. As Castle Rock gradually probes the mysteries of Henry and his inscrutable new client, the writers offer tantalizing clues about that noise and its connection to those who hear it, but I'm offering more of a warning than a spoiler when I say that the deafening din is all part of the season's "mystery box" that is never opened more than a crack. Indeed, the penultimate ninth episode, "Henry Deaver", is purposefully designed to call into question everything we've seen up until that point, while the finale, Episode 10, "Romans", feels rushed in its effort to tie up loose ends and provide something resembling a conclusion. (Presumably, creators Shaw and Thomason did not know when they designed the season whether the show would be renewed.) It's an unsatisfying finale, and if you're going to invest the time to give Season One of Castle Rock your full attention, you might as well know going in that its core riddles are never solved (at least not so far, and I wouldn't count on it in the future).

Castle Rock is often at its best when it takes side excursions into secondary characters, like Gordon and Lilith (Mark Harelik and Lauren Bowles), recent arrivals from Iowa with a troubled marital history. They buy the late Warden Lacy's former home and convert it into a combination bed-and-breakfast and museum of famous local murders. Not surprisingly, this odd juxtaposition foretells violence—but then, violence frequently erupts in Castle Rock, and The Kid is never far from the scene. The season's finest single episode, Episode 7, "The Queen", focuses on Henry Deaver's foster mother, Ruth, as she battles the creeping decay of Alzheimer's, slipping backward and forward between memory and reality and never entirely sure where she exists in time. (She plants pieces from an antique chess set around the house as reminders.) With a powerhouse performance from Sissy Spacek, "The Queen" is a moving and disturbing portrait of one woman's courageous (and ultimately futile) battle to hold onto her once accomplished and disciplined mind. The episode is told almost entirely from Ruth's point of view, drawing the audience into her terrifying experience of reality disintegrating before her eyes—and it's a triumph.

Castle Rock: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format of Castle Rock was unavailable, but like nearly every project today, it is a product of digital capture and post-production. (Update: Further research has confirmed that the series was captured on Alexa, with a few flashback sequences shot on film.) The credited cinematographers are Jeffrey Greeley (Silicon Valley) and Richard Rutkowski (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan). Warner has distributed Season One's ten episodes over two 1080p, AVC-encoded BD-50s, on which the image accurately reproduces the digital clarity and understated palette that was evident in the Hulu streaming presentations. The Blu-rays offer deep, solid blacks wherever necessary (e.g., in pitch-black interiors and in the mysterious woods at night) and bright but not overly bright whites (e.g., in the memorable early scene where Sheriff Pangborn rescues the young Henry from the ice). The palette in between generally avoids bright colors, consistent with the series' concept of a town that has seen better days. There are moments when the colors appear more saturated (e.g., Molly's visions), but desaturation is the norm. Clarity and detail are consistently excellent, and the image is free from artifacts or distortion, despite the typically low bitrates favored by Warner's TV division. The episodes average around 17 Mbps, but the encode appears capable.

Castle Rock: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Castle Rock Blu-rays' 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, represents a substantial upgrade over the 2.0 mix to which most Hulu subscribers are limited. There are recurrent scenes in which the rear channels are active, or even hyperactive, particularly when Molly is experiencing a vision or Henry is deafened by the mysterious sounds that his foster father believes to be the voice of God. Violent scenes that can't be further described without spoilers also take advantage of the rear channels to expand their impact. The track has broad dynamic range and deep bass extension, and the atmospheric score by Thomas Newman (Skyfall, Bridge of Spies) and Chris Westlake (Midnighters) is one of the series' strongest elements. The dialogue is more clearly rendered in 5.1 than in 2.0 and better prioritized.

Castle Rock: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Inside the Episode (1080p; 1.78:1): These brief promotional featurettes initially appeared on Hulu with each episode.


• Disc 1
• 1. Severance (3:44)
• 2. Habeas Corpus (2:54)
• 3. Local Color (3:21)
• 4. The Box (2:48)
• 5. Harvest (2:55)


• Disc 2
• 6. Filter (3:24)
• 7. The Queen (3:03)
• 8. Past Perfect (2:24)
• 9. Henry Deaver (2:36)
• 10. Romans (3:12)



• Castle Rock: Blood on the Page (1080p; 1.78:1; 19:40): Series creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, along with various writers and producers on the series (including J.J. Abrams), discuss the appeal of Stephen King's work and the overall conception of Castle Rock.



• Clockwork of Horror (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:51): How does one synthesize the narrative styles of Stephen King and J.J. Abrams? This short featurette attempts to address that question, which may be the biggest mystery in Castle Rock.

Castle Rock: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It will be interesting to see how Castle Rock's creative team continues the series in a second season. Will they follow the same central characters, perhaps adding further layers of uncertainty to the mysteries of Henry Deaver and The Kid, or will they look elsewhere in their fictional town for a new "mystery box"? Either way, don't expect Castle Rock to explain its puzzles. By design, the show is better at questions than answers. The Blu-ray presentation is capable and cautiously recommended, especially for the superior audio.