Adapting Stephen King novels for both movies or television has always been tricky. Either the adaptation changes a lot of the elements that King put in his novels — Kubrick’s version of The Shining, for instance — or they have a hard time corralling King’s dense narratives and thickets of characters — the recent adaptation of The Stand is an example of this. Even when King is involved in the adaptation, as he is with a new series based on his 2019 novel The Institute, things don’t always come together.
Opening Shot: A large number of students are taking a standardized test in the school gymnasium.
The Gist: One of those students, Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) finishes way before any of the other students. He’s 14 and already taking senior-level courses at his high school. He tells his parents after the test that even the principal agrees that he’s better off going to MIT, which has been Luke’s plan for college.
Before he can even think about life at MIT, intruders come into his house, drug him and take him away. He wakes up in a perfect replica of his bedroom, located in a drab, school-like building somewhere in Maine. He’s been taken to The Institute, and the first person he meets there is a girl named Kalisha (Simone Miller). She explains to him that he’s been “recruited,” but who recruited him is a mystery. One of the things she asks him is if he’s TP (telepathy) or TK (telekinesis). He’s a TK.
In the meantime, Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) makes his way to Denison, Maine, and applies for a job as a “Night knocker” for the local police department. When he interviews with Chief John Ashworth (Martin Roach), we find out that he was a decorated cop in Boston, but had to resign after an incident where he killed a teenager brandishing a gun.
Back at The Institute, Luke is called in to talk to the director, Ms. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker). She tells him that being recruited for The Institute is an honor, and that they study the TK and TP abilities of him and the others in the “Back half” to benefit not just the U.S., but humanity. As long as he does what they instruct him to do, all should be fine, and when they’re done, his memory is wiped and he goes home.
Luke, of course, is very cynical, but is brought somewhat in line when his refusal to get a tracking device on his ear results in physical harm. He meets George (Arlen So), Iris (Briva Pandya) and Nick (Fion Laird). Nick is the most doubtful of the motives of Sigsby and her minions, having spent his life in group homes, and he tries to recruit Luke to his point of view.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Benjamin Cavell and directed by Jack Bender, The Institute is based on a novel by Stephen King. It certainly has the feel of other recent King adaptations, like The Stand, crossed with Stranger Things. And since it’s about both children and telekinesis, it might be helpful to familiarize yourself with the 1984 Firestarter movie, which starred a then 8-year-old Drew Barrymore.
Our Take: There is a story somewhere in the first episode of The Institute, but while watching the episode, it felt like it got lost in too many details. The idea is that Tim and Luke are going to be taking these parallel paths, with Luke at The Institute and Tim in nearby Denison, and that they’ll come together at some point as the real purpose of The Institute becomes apparent to both of them. But there is so much setup and exposition in this first episode that we wonder just how long it will take for the show to get to that point.
Of course, we know more about Luke’s situation than Tim’s, which starts very vague. That’s thanks to a very long scene between Luke and Sigsby where she explains to him everything that he needs to know — and tells him what he doesn’t and shouldn’t know. The fact that Parker performs that scene in her usual droll, somewhat laid-back cadence was an interesting choice, as if Bender told Parker to “just do your Mary-Louise Parker thing”. And while Parker does her usual compelling job as Sigsby, whom we see has her own strange proclivities in private, playing her as the usual M-LP persona is an unexpected choice for a character that reminds us of Patricia Arquette’s Severance character, Harmony Cobell.
Freeman’s performance as Luke definitely makes him look more like the actor’s real age, 19, than a genius 14-year-old, but it’s still fun to watch. There are other pieces of the story that don’t get a lot of time, like Kate (Jordan Alexander), who pretends to be a journalist but works for someone else. And then we come back to the kids that are Luke’s fellow Institute “recruits” and exactly what roles they’re going to have.
Sex and Skin: Nothing besides some kissing.
Parting Shot: “So, smart kid, how do we get the fuck out of here?” Nick asks Luke as they talk in the compound late at night.
Sleeper Star: Julian Richlings is Stackhouse and Robert Joy is Hastings, two of Sigsby’s henchmen played by actors who are experts at playing evil henchmen.
Most Pilot-y Line: One of the things that’s not explained well is “Shots for Dots”; if the recruit sees dots after getting injected with whatever they inject them with, they go to the “front half” which is a step closer to going home. Yet Kalisha keeps kissing Luke, hoping to give him chicken pox and keep him around longer because he won’t see the dots while he’s contagious… or something like that.
Our Call: STREAM IT. This is more of a hopeful recommendation than a wholehearted one. There are lots of good elements to The Institute that just don’t seem to come together well in the first episode. But the hope is that they will coalesce as the series goes along. But there’s just as good a chance that the show will devolve into a mess of untied narrative threads.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.