Lizzy Caplan! Tim Robbins! Elsie Fisher!
BY TOM PHILIP | September 30, 2019
Hulu’s Castle Rock, which dutifully remixes pretty much everything from Stephen King’s vast body of work into a new kind of anthology horror show, is coming back for a second season. Season one had bright spots in a brilliant André Holland leading turn, Sissy Spacek (yes, from that other Stephen King adaptation), a moody Bill Skarsgård (yes, from that other Stephen King adaptation), and a whole lot of confusing metaphysical stuff that I didn’t find particularly interesting as the show wore on.
This year is going to be different. Lizzy Caplan, even in this short trailer, inhabits Annie Wilkes, better known as the nurse who smashed up James Caan’s leg bones in Misery. There’s a lot of Kathy Bates’s performance in Caplan’s work, but it’s also much more than an impression. Instead of being holed up in a snowbound lodge, she’s on the run with her daughter (Eighth Grade‘s Elsie Fisher (!!!)) after a mysterious, violent event in her past forced her to flee cross-country (I hope it involved a big hammer).
Castle Rock also likes to nod to King’s other works by virtue of casting alone. Joining the show this year is Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption) as Pop Merrill, the head of a Castle Rock crime family. Also coming aboard is “I am the captain now” Barkhad Abdi as a Somali refugee determined to make peace with Robbins’s clan, and Yusra Warsama as his sister, also with mysterious ties to Pop in her past. This is gonna be good.
Castle Rock begins airing on Hulu on October 23.
