CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Sam Panico While known primarily as a horror writer, the novel The Tommyknockers was a rare science fiction novel from Stephen King. However, the novel was written while King was struggling with addiction and is packed with metaphors for dealing with substance abuse. The writer said, "The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act." Hey, what better movie to review, right? Originally airing on May 9 and 10, 1993 on ABC, this mini-series is all about the town of Haven, Maine. That's where Bobbi Anderson (Marg Helgenberger, TV's CSI) and her boyfriend, Jim "Gard" Gardner (Jimmy Smits, Prince Leia's adopted dad) live with their dog Petey. They're both writers - I know you're shocked, King protagonists who are writers and live in New England - and both suffering. Bobbi has writer's block and Gard is an alcoholic. One day, they find a stone object connected to a series of cubes.Meanwhile, Haven is packed with all manner of quirky folks. There's postal worker Joe Paulson (Cliff Young, The Hunger, Shock Treatment) who delivers the mail and the goods to his mistress, Nancy Voss (Tracy Lords!) instead of his wife, Deputy Becka Paulson (Allyce Beasley from TV's Moonlighting). Then there's Bryant Brown (Robert Carradine, Revenge of the Nerds), his wife Marie, their two kids and her father Ev Hillman (E.G. Marshall, who battled bugs in Creepshow). Then there's small-town sheriff and doll collector Ruth Merrill (Joanna Cassidy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), who has to deal with state trooper Butch Duggan, who comes from Derry (which we all know is from It).As Bobbi and Gard find more of the object, everyone in town begins to invent things while suffering from insomnia. Basically, they're all on alien cocaine, making all manner of stuff that you'd never really need, like letter sorters, a BLT sandwich maker and more, which all glow green when used. Bobbi beats her writer's block with a machine that telepathically lets her write and the results astound Gard, who thinks that he's immune to all of this because of the plate in his head.One of the kids, Hilly, makes a magic machine that makes his brother Davey disappear. Everyone looks for a little while before becoming distracted by their machines. I mean, a BLT maker? That's a little more important than a child.Joe Paulson's wife finally catches him after her favorite TV show talks directly to him. She electrocutes him and starts babbling about the tommyknockers before being sent away. That same phrase is repeated by Hilly before he has a seizure, gets a massive brain tumor and loses most of his teeth.Ev Hillman learns that the town of Haven is cursed. I can hear your surprise now, a New England town in a Stephen King novel being cursed. But yes, it's true. Meanwhile, Nancy Voss has seemingly taken on a supervillain air, everyone is busy inventing more things and the town glows green.Gard gets drunk - because that's how you deal with these kinds of things - and sees the town gather in a green glow. His wife is seemingly leading them and he manages to convince her that he is part of this whole alien cocaine inventing stuff and then joining the becoming thing. After having sex with her - because again, this is how you deal with things - he sneaks out to their garage where he finds alien technology powered by townspeople and their dog. Ev, still alive, tells him he must find Davey, who is with the tommyknockers.Digging all night long, Gard finds a UFO filled with mummified aliens and Davey, encased in a green crystal. Gard forces his wife to realize what is going on, which is when an alien attacks them before Gard decapitates it. This, of course, causes all hell to break loose. Nancy Voss tries to get everyone still under alien control to stop the destruction of the ship, but Gard is able to stop them thanks to the sacrifice of Ev, who chokes Nancy out while Bobbi saves Petey's life. Speaking of sacrifices, Gard makes the ultimate one to save the whole town.Whew. And ugh. The Tommyknockers is a rough watch but not nearly as rough as the book's ending, which ends with Gard taking the ship into space, killing nearly all of the changed townspeople and then agents from the FBI, CIA, and more Black Ops groups killing most of the survivors and destroying their inventions. One of those groups, The Shop, shows up in many of King's books, such as Firestarter, Golden Years, The Lawnmower Man and The Langoliers. It's also hinted that they may have caused The Mist and they fail to learn what Captain Trips is all about in The Stand.Originally, the film was directed by Lewis Teague (Alligator, Cat's Eye, Cujo), but he was replaced two days into filming by John Power. It was written by Lawrence Cohen, who did much better with the It mini-series.Many have compared this novel to Quatermass and the Pit. This Nigel Kneale (John Carpenter recruited him to write Halloween 3: Season of the Witch) written BBC TV also was about a long-buried spaceship that had a negative impact on anyone around it.Speaking of negative impacts, that what this movie had on me. It dragged and just seemed ridiculous, but I think that's the result of its source material. No one has learned anything, though, because James Wan is talking about remaking this in 2019.

Claudio Carvalho In the small town Haven, in Maine, the aspiring writer Roberta 'Bobbi' Anderson (Marg Helgenberger) lives in an isolated house with her alcoholic boyfriend, the poet James "Gard" Gardner (Jimmy Smits), and their dog Petey. While Gard is traveling to a poet's convention, she stumbles with a green stone and she becomes obsessed to excavate the object. Further, she overhears voices that teach her how to fix the heater and how to write a novel using a typewriter operated by telepathy. Meanwhile the postal worker Joe Paulson (Cliff De Young) cheats on his wife Deputy Becka Paulson (Allyce Beasley) with his sexy coworker Nancy Voss (Traci Lords). They also see the green light in the woods and Nancy becomes an inventor. Becka is advised by the host of a television live show that he husband is cheating on her and instructed how to kill him. The boy Hilly Brown (Leon Woods) is encouraged by his grandfather Ev Hillman (E.G. Marshall) to become a magician and he overhears voices that teach him new tricks. During a party, he makes his brother Davey Brown (Paul McIver) disappears and is not able to bring his back for the despair of his parents Marie Brown (Annie Corley) and Bryant Brown (Robert Carradine). Sheriff Ruth Merrill (Joanna Cassidy) and State Trooper Butch Duggan (John Ashton) that loves her organize a search party but they do not succeed to find the boy. Soon the whole town is under control of the green light, capable to read minds and Bobbi is their leader. Only a few inhabitants are not under control, among them Ev and Gard that has a platinum plate in the head. What is the evil force that is exerting control in the population? "The Tommyknockers" is a sci-fi horror TV Mini-Series with the story by Stephen King. The cast is excellent; the plot and characters are very well developed; but unfortunately in a pace too slow for fans of this genre. There is no mystery or tension and there are many unnecessary scenes that should have been deleted in the edition and others that are too short. For example, Becka is sent to a mental institution and there is only a glance at her locked in a cell. Gard in the convention of poets is excessively long. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Tommyknockers – Tranquem Suas Portas" ("Tommyknockers – Lock Your Doors")

Drewdog90 this movie was so bad compared to the book. There was so many things that happened in the book that didn't happen in the movie. Ev Hillman gave Hilly the magic set on his birthday, the movie he had it before his birthday. In the movie he did his trick at his party, in the book it was at a friends party. In the book it was described to me anyway that the ship was flat and silver. But in the movie it was boxier and square. In the Book Ruth blew up the clock tower, movie her dolls killed her and she went missing. Movie Butch Dugan got killed by a coke machine instead of shooting himself in the head in the book. There was no mention of the Bangor Daily News guy. BUT those things were just little things compared to the end of the movie. When him and Bobbi went into the ship and the tommy knockers were alive (book they were dead) and then they found the missing brown boy in the ship and freed him then Bobbi and the boy got out while Gard flew the ship in the sky and blew it up but in the BOOK Gard killed Bobbi tried to help save the little boy with the transmitter but he thought he failed but the kid ended up in the hospital room with his brother. And then Gard got into the ship and fire was everywhere and all the people who became were after him got into the ship and it took off to where he didn't know and then the book ended.The movie was nothing like that. It was disappointing and the book was pretty good.

delboy290 After reading the book and watching the film adaption, you can't help thinking the plot has been lifted largely from Quatermass and the pit - a 1958 UK TV serial and a 1967 film of the same name.The similarities are striking: alien ship crash-lands on earth and is buried underground. Ship discovered many years later and begins to revive its powers and affecting those around it, with eventual consequences for the whole of mankind.It ends with a single saviour (Dr Quatermass) who is leagues more interesting than the poet in Tommyknockers. The difference is, however, Quatermass is genuinely thought-provoking and quite chilling given the low-budget origins.In fact, I recommend anyone who was disappointed with Tommyknockers to go get Quatermass and the pit and see how scary a film can really be when aliens are intertwined with humanity and played out on the earth with real city backdrops, instead of some mythical world elsewhere.