TVSquad

(S01E02) Nightmares are an interesting phenomenon. What can seem terrifying while it's playing out in your subconscious loses much of its power once you wake up and try to explain it to someone. In that regard, Nightmares and Dreamscapes was a perfectly apt title for Stephen King's 1993 short story collection. When King is at his best, he's able to make even the most absurd situations seem real and horrific. When those same ideas are fleshed out into a visual medium, however, they become diluted without King etching the images into your mind himself.

This is why so many of King's works suffer when they're translated to the movie or television screen, and why "Crouch End" the second offering of the new series Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (click here for Keith's review of the premiere episode "Battleground," based on a short story from the Night Shift collection) was more tiresome than terrifying. Also, out of all the short stories the man has written, this wasn't his best one.