During a flight from Los Angeles to Boston, ten passengers fall asleep and then wake up to discover the plane is otherwise deserted. Conveniently, one of the passengers (David Morse) is also a pilot and he’s able to fly the plane to Bangor airport, which is as deserted as Graham Platner’s campaign office. As the other passengers try to figure out where they are and what’s going on, bond trader Craig (Bronson Pinchot) worries about the Langoliers, monsters that chase lazy people. Craig’s father told him about the Langoliers and sure enough, it turns out that they’re real and they’re eating time.

There have been a lot of really bad movies made out of the work of Stephen King and this might be the worst. It was actually made for television and it aired over two nights in May of 1995. I can remember everyone watching it and, even among the generally easy-to-please crowd that I went to school with, everyone agreed it was pretty bad. Do you have a friend who claims that Stephen King can do no wrong? Show them all three hours of The Langoliers, which sticks pretty closely to King’s original novella.

The premise isn’t really that bad. It’s the type of thing that shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits used to work wonders with. The problem is that the movie drags on for a punishing 180 minutes and Bronson Pinchot is the only member of the cast who really shows much energy. In fact, Pinchot shows almost too much energy. I get that Pinchot was trying to show everyone that he wasn’t Serge and he wasn’t Cousin Balki, but his performance as Craig is so Type A that it’s tiring to watch. The movie also suffers because eventually the Langoliers show up and they look like a bunch of demonic Pac-Men.

Sometimes, a picture says a thousand words:

I know that some people now say that The Langoliers is underrated or it’s “so bad that it’s good.” Don’t buy it. Instead, watch one of Tom Holland’s genuinely good horror films, like the original Child’s Play or Fright Night. Don’t subject yourself to this.