So much wasted potential. Mark Petrie has been race swapped from white in the books to black. The Dr Jimmy Cody a white male in the books has been race and gender swapped to a black female. There is no mention of race or gender throughout for either character however this is clearly a DEI decision therefore the higher woke rating. Both of these characters are also of course 'Hero' characters. The rest of the casting
is pretty good and the acting is decent. The Striker character is a bit of a miscast and in not at all like the book. There are 2 major problems
with this movie. The first being it's far too short. The book is very long and trying to fit this into a sub 2 hr movie is ridiculous. Everything is far too rushed with no time spent on any of the characters. While they included most of the large cast and scenes from the book no time is spent on any backstory
and none of the characters are fleshed out at all. For instance the Ralphie and Danny sequences takes place over 5 days in the book but here it's in the same night and within several minutes. Characters jump to conclusions and say things that make no sense because huge chunks of the book are left out that get the characters and the story to that point. Then for some reason they added extra scenes not in the book that serve no purpose. A few odd changes as well with the biggest being the ending. It is completely changed for the worse and unrecognizable from the book for no apparent reason. The second issue is while the
the cinematography is excellent and the movie is shot very creepy with some good tension the actual horror and action scenes are terrible. There is no scares and those scenes are just bland and sterile. It's almost like a different director shot the action/horror sequences.