Normally, I would be beleaguered about the prospect of a belated, mostly disconnected sequel to a beloved 1978 miniseries. However, the X-factor is Larry Cohen’s name across the credits from his penmanship to his direction. Cohen is always a distinctively Homeric, astute, streetwise New York helmsman.

What could’ve been a paycheck job for most schlockmeisters, Cohen interjects the picture with gutter-poetry moxie. During his surveillance of an Amazonian sacrifice, anthropologist Joe Weber (Cohen muse Michael Moriarty) rationalizes his voyeuristic detachment (“I thought you said this was a fertility ritual.” “Of course it is. He knocked up the chief’s favorite wife.”).

Anyone who is briefly gnostic of my taste will bristle when a raucous child is introduced in the form of Weber’s profane, chain-smoking teenage son Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed). Nonetheless, the writing here is the salvation behind his unruly antics as he is not a redeemable ragamuffin.

In the meantime, the protagonists are finagled by the New England hamlet’s homespun delicacies. Both father and son are endeared with harlequin romances. To be moderately scrutinizing, the film’s creature effects are rather neoprene and thrifty (Axel’s blue demon could a Spirit Halloween mask) and the terror is minimalist next to the Leni Riefenstahl social commentary.

Much like It’s Alive III, Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff, Cohen endows Moriarty with a richly idiosyncratic character with moral ambiguity (while in Jerusalem’s Lot, Joe is wheedled to be a documentarian on the vampire’s lineage and lifestyle). The judge’s tour of folklore (mirror reflections and no garlic allergies) is a crackling sampler of Cohen’s unimpeachable, politically charged imagination. At one point, Moriarty is disillusioned when a history lesson is “anti-human propaganda”.

Stephen King never adjoined a sequel to his novel and the film is entirely Cohen’s creation (sans the input of King himself) which might be why it is such a ghoulishly off-kilter, propulsive horror-comedy (“If he loves us, he’ll be my successor. If not, I’ll send his soul straight to hell. Goodnight dear.”).

Not all Stephen King short stories should be cushioned and expanded to feature length. Although this adaptation of a 2012 novella is a father-son collaboration with Joe Hill, the film itself is an interminable, lackluster hodgepodge of King’s previous motifs (religious fanaticism of The Mist, the insular claustrophobia of 1408, the sinister, rural setting of Children of the Corn, etc.).

Whenever Patrick Wilson’s name scrolls across the opening credits, it is almost certifiable that he will be typecast as the smug villain in sheep’s clothing (in this case, a gregarious real-estate agent on vacation with his family). Vincenzo Natali doesn’t contort our expectations with this thespian pigeonholing.

No amount of visual chicanery (e.g. Beveled angles over the field or a dewy droplets onto the absentee boyfriend’s face) can compensate for the needlessly turgid storyline. Weirdly, Netflix has been culpable for some of the more ambitious King transcriptions of late (Gerald’s Game and 1922) but this is absolutely the nadir.

The film fizzles long before Ross’ (Wilson) sanity dissolves. It retraces the origins of how the multifarious players become ensnared in the nexus and the element of time displacement is extremely self-evident before it is telegraphed in italics to the audience. Also, it is an audio headache with everyone in the midst of cacophonous shrieks throughout the blades.

Ultimately, the book isn’t substantial enough for an 1-hour-and-41-minute running time and the vagueness behind the Black Rock is not an asset. It should’ve been a lean viral video on Shudder instead of a picture which elicits unintentional guffaws during a grass-disciple chant and sacrifice.