It is a genuine shame that with all his potential, the most provocative of horror figures should, went left on his own, knowingly create such a numbingly pointless movie. Although it begins in part with a sense of celebratory anarchy, it is ultimately full of loathing for what it celebrates as stupid humanity. Its crudeness is meant to be an insult and although there is an apt, childish scatology at times, the film’s contempt shows through more than anything else. Sadly, King cannot carry the opening sense of anarchy into any kind of pointed nihilism, leaving only the joy in destruction. Thus, his vision of the apocalyptic end of the machine age becomes merely trite. The horror of humanity losing control over its mechanical creations can sustain this film only so far before it becomes another version of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but without any sense of visceral terror. Horror is replaced by silliness. If his intention was indeed to create a junk movie, then King has undoubtedly succeeded, but the sad fact that emerges from viewing this film is that he may indeed be capable of nothing better, at least on film. His deliberate refusal to give audiences much of evident substance is a condescending insult to anyone who has a genuine interest in the genre. Yet it must be said that no other King adaptation to date has captured the gleefully crude humor and seething contempt for humanity that is found in Maximum Overdrive.
Even the film’s more genuinely sinister implications of an apocalyptic revolution are left rather scantily implied. Although these machines may have been somehow made homicidally sentient, they apparently remain as moronic as the people they intend to eliminate: they are just more mean-spirited about it. The idea of this machine uprising as a kind of slave revolt is made clear in a number of scenes although the revolt seems more like purposeless anarchy than any long-term plan. This allows King to indulge in this moment without considering any repercussions – it is thus a film about life in the moment, of reacting to unusual circumstances as they happen. Either these idiotic characters are incapable of thinking ahead or King is bleakly suggesting that what humanity has unthinkingly created for itself is a disorder from which there can be no recovery. Sadly, his ending explanation negates even this and suggests the film as a contemplation of a freak occurrence rather than the apocalypse of the machine age which the film promises initially to address, though it could mark its start. As a crude celebration of brief, inexplicable anarchy, the film has a paroxysmal quality – a gleeful flight of apocalyptic fancy which deliberately chooses to dumb down its own ideas. This, however, may be a real let down for many viewers who may even consider King’s attitude condescending. Maybe that was the point. read more