The tyranist's thoughts
Since I randomly picked Watchers off the shelf of my local library (mostly for the cover art) and loved every word of it, I've been a Dean Koontz fan. I can't profess to having read everything written by him because a) it wouldn't be true and b) only true fans really understand just how prolific he was. I say was, because we are living in the new Koontz era. I was understandably excited, then, to find out that another Koontz mini-series was coming.
Sole Survivor is another airline crash story but it resembles its predecessor ( Sole Survivor) in no way other than name. It's been a year since flight 353 went down and Billy Zane's character is still tortured by memories of his wife and child who died in the crash. One night while visiting the grave he meets a mysterious woman taking a polaroid of the grave. The game begins. Is his daughter still alive? Could anyone have survived that crash?
Featuring a really nice Mark Snow score, this movie was very reminiscent of the things that brought me to love Dean Koontz' work in the first place. Sole Survivor was published in 1998 and was on the cusp of the new era of Dean Koontz that saw less fiction published, an infamous new photo of the author and some departures from the fiction that drew me to him in the first place. Still, this mini-series drew me back to what was strongest in his fiction. I don't know if that is the fault of the adapter (son of the prolific screenwriter/horror author Richard Matheson, by the way) or if the novel actually reflects this. You see, I haven't read it. Fear of the new Dean Koontz kept me from it, but this has given me a change of mind. I'm going to have to read it now.
Unfortunately, I doubt this was well-received or even seen by more than a handful. Fox did almost nothing to promote it and I only found out about it through a TV spot a few days before it aired. Whether they simply didn't have faith in it or used it to replace something else that fell through, I don't know, but chances are you didn't tune in.
This is a must of Koontz fans. Hopefully it will see the light of day on DVD otherwise, I doubt it will see the light of day ever again.