Bag of Bones (2011)

This miniseries had a huge marketing campaign in NYC, and you couldn't get to work or grab a cup of coffee without seeing that creepy little drowning girl.  I meant to watch it when it aired, but you know how that goes, and blah blah blah that's why we have Netflix instant.  I've read all of Stephen King's books, and I vaguely remember meandering my way through Bag of Bones several years back, but obviously it wasn't very memorable, as I can't recall a thing about the story.  I don't particularly like Pierce Brosnan, but I do love me some Melissa George and Anika Noni Rose, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

I've been watching a lot of King adaptations recently, and I realized that there's one thing that really bugs me about SK's writing.  I never noticed it as much in the books, but for some reason, in the movies, it's more pronounced.  For the love of God, the catch phrases.  In this one, it's "custody comes with it's responsibilities" but we all know we've heard them in every King piece from The Green Mile to Pet Semetary.  And although they also usually exist in the books, the cheese factor gets seriously amped up in the movie adaptations.

So, to the miniseries.  Bag of Bones is about a writer, Michael Noonan (Pierce Brosnan), who suddenly loses his wife, Jo.  He is deeply morning, and decides to go to their vacation home on Dark Score Lake to have some peace and work on his next book.  There he meets single mom Mattie (Melissa George) and her daughter Kyra (Caitlin Carmichael).  He almost immediately gets the vibe that something weird is going on in Dark Score, and he begins to have weird visions involving Kyra, Mattie, Jo, and a blues singer, Sara Tidwell (Anika Noni Rose).  Hoping to quell these nightmares, he digs deeper into the history of Dark Score Lake.  Meanwhile, he helps Mattie, who fears losing custody of her daughter to her powerful father-in-law, Max Devore.  The story keeps trying to force Mattie and Michael into some sort of romantic relationship, although it just seems so forced and unbelievable.

Michael learns that something terrible happened in Dark Score in the summer of 1939, setting off a curse that affected young girls right up until this day.  With the help of his dead wife, he digs up the ghosts, so to speak, and tries to put their souls to rest.  I really wanted to like this movie, but I just really didn't get anything out of it.  It came across as cheesy and cliched and none of it really resonated with me.  I may consider giving the book another read, just for comparison's sake, but there are much better King adaptations out there than Bag of Bones.