This Deeply Disturbing Stephen King Adaptation Comes With Some Seriously Heavy Baggage
Years before his sexual assault allegations came to light, Bryan Singer followed up his breakthrough film, The Usual Suspects, with an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, Apt Pupil. One of King’s lesser-known works, Apt Pupil follows Todd, a teenage suburbanite with a toxic fascination with Nazism. That fascination becomes an obsession when he learns that a war criminal, played by none other than Ian McKellan, is living in his neighborhood. Some coincidence, huh?
The novella was published in the anthology, “Different Seasons,” alongside the stories that inspired The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me. There were several attempts to produce Apt Pupil, and there was almost a version starring Nicol Williamson as Dussander, the Nazi war criminal. They had even started shooting when the plug was pulled. It looked like a film adaptation was dead in the water. That is until Bryan Singer used the momentum from The Usual Suspects to direct his own version.
The result was a film that proves to be one of the eeriest and most disturbing Stephen King adaptations, not just because of the work on-screen, but because the crimes that the director would go on to commit put the film’s themes in a whole new warped context. Seeing how the film shows a seduction of evil with a truly predatory relationship between Dussander and Todd, it almost feels like Apt Pupil is Singer telling on himself.
No matter what I say about Apt Pupil and how compelling of a viewing experience I had with it (I saw it years before the Singer allegations came to light), I can’t recommend it for obvious reasons. It’s actually quite difficult to find these days, so anybody interested in experiencing this tale should go straight to the source and read the original novella. And for anyone who’s still curious to watch the film version, I hope this analysis might be a sufficient alternative to watching it.
But if you’re like me and saw it before Singer’s abuses became known to the public, it’s impossible to get this film out of my mind. It’s the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, and for reasons I’ll get into, the film’s themes have become rather depressingly relevant. But there are images, dialogue, and moments that I’ve never been able to forget, even after just one initial viewing.
For one, Ian McKellan delivers one of his most underrated performances as Dussander. It’s ironic that he would play a Nazi here since his next collaboration with Singer would see McKellan playing a Holocaust survivor in Magneto. McKellan broke through to American audiences and became a household name with the aforementioned X-Men films, and especially his Oscar-nominated performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. But his performance here might be the most transformative work of his career. His Dussander first comes off as a pathetic, geriatric antique of the Third Reich. He’s honestly intimidated by Todd throughout much of the film, and McKellan is so squeamish in these scenes that it’s almost easy to pity him. But the scene where McKellan’s performance really transcends is probably the most infamous scene from the film: when Todd forces Dussander to put on a Nazi uniform and goose-step through the house.
At this point, Todd is still cosplaying as a Nazi and the audience really sees the adolescent thrill on his face when he starts ordering Dussander to march around. But in a truly spine-chilling moment, the evil is reawoken in Dussander and he starts seig-heilling. Todd’s face goes from fascinated to horrified as he watches this frail old man become the embodiment of evil, right before him.
More eerily, in my opinion, is how Apt Pupil stands as an omen, a prophetic warning of both the evil that the director was capable of, and today’s current social landscape, which sees disaffected young white men swayed and lured by white nationalism and fascism. It’s hard not to watch Todd’s wilful descent into Nazi fetishism without thinking of the shitheads that swarmed Charlottesville with tiki torches.
That hideous spectacle was so shocking, not just because we had an infestation of white nationalism in our common psyche, but that these men holding the banner of neo-fascism had been regular guys, at some point. The dude you had gym class with, maybe even one of your drinking buddies in college. The collective mindset of the white, suburban male has proven particularly vulnerable to Nazism in the age of the internet. Between 4Chan and Nick Fuentes, a whole subset of today’s generation has either overtly or quietly become sympathetic to the cause of white supremacy. And no other story that I can think of predicted this so sharply as this one.
There’ve been films centered on evil children, of course. King had been no stranger to the concept. There’s basically a whole genre of “generational apathy” thrillers with chilling flicks like River’s Edge. But most evil-kid movies center around telekinetic teachers or white-trash communities that feel vastly removed from the everyday lives of the suburban audiences that make up most moviegoing demographics. Apt Pupil doesn’t have any such layer of distance, in that respect. The danger here is not foreign, or imaginary. It’s a sinister force that can creep into any household, or infect any mind. Even your straight-A, Harvard-material teen can succumb to it, just as it does to Todd.
Todd here is played by Brad Renfro, an actor who died tragically young from a drug overdose. Apt Pupil differs from the novella in that Todd here only knows Dussander for one year, whereas in the original story, Todd meets Dussander when he’s 14 and continues to have a relationship with him into his senior year. Quite ironic, since Renfro actually was 14 when production began. The timeline in the novel gives the relationship between the two more time to breathe and lends more depth overall. But Renfro is given the proper screen time to develop both his character and his dynamic with McKellan. Renfro’s playing a role of unbelievable range. He has to go from being an ostensibly normal and likable teenager to bullying a Nazi war criminal. That’s a hard performance to sell, but thanks to his chemistry with McKellan, the performance hits.
As effective as the film is in its mission to unnerve its audience, the film’s potency is somewhat diluted by some tacky scenes of murder that occur later on in the film’s runtime. Dussander starts satisfying his bloodlust by killing cats and homeless men. The original story is guilty of this, although watching all of this feels even sillier than just reading it.
But the most lacking element to me is that Singer never really dissects Nazism as a social or political force. The way it’s presented, fascism is motivated by nothing more than a primal bloodlust, which really undermines the final analysis. We’ve always had murderers and thugs, but the Nazis were an entirely different beast. They weren’t driven just to murder, but to reshape the world in their own twisted vision. As credible as McKellan is with his performance, Dussander seems somewhat reduced to a more generic screen villain that delights in simple torment.
Singer admitted in an interview that the film “wasn’t about fascism or National Socialism.” Sure, it wasn’t a history book or an essay. But it’s still an analysis, and filmmakers shouldn’t be using Nazi symbols just for the sake of charged imagery. Perhaps Singer wasn’t honest enough with himself to deliver on the promise of Apt Pupil. To direct this movie, one would have to truly confront their own darkness in order to understand it. Given all the crimes that Singer would go on to commit, he embraced his darkness but couldn’t understand it.
Singer’s ending was controversial with critics and fans of the original story because it’s the biggest deviation from the source material. Dussander completes suicide after being discovered in both versions, but in King’s novella, Todd’s feat is as bleak as the imagination could fathom. He grabs a sniper’s rifle and starts shooting at commuters over a highway before finally being gunned down.
Singer’s version sees Todd actually blackmailing his high-school counselor, played by a conspicuous David Schwimmer, who’s found out the truth about Todd’s relationship with Dussander. He threatens to lie and claim that Schwimmer sexually molested him, which is another hair-raising moment after one takes into account Singer’s later crimes.
The ending sees Schwimmer giving up and walking away to save his reputation, allowing Todd to attend an Ivy League university and continue with his privileged life. It’s hard to talk about this ending given the context of who directed it, but upon my initial viewing, I actually preferred it to the novel. King cranks it up in his original ending, and it seemed like he approached the climax with a blunt, traumatic force. This ending is delicately sinister and only adds to the creeping realization that society’s most dangerous monsters walk among us in unassuming vessels.
And that’s Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil, possibly the most cursed adaptation of Stephen King’s work. Despite whatever praise I may have for individual elements of the film, I implore you not to watch it even out of sickening curiosity. Not only does Bryan Singer not deserve a reappraisal, but Apt Pupil is unsettling in the wrong ways. It was crafted by sinister hands, and it feels like you’re watching a cruel man give in to his demons.
I still hold the original novella in high regard and pray that we can get another film version that will bring King’s story to life in a less morally-dubious fashion. It’s a compelling story that’s only gotten more relevant in today’s age, and the right team could make an instant classic out of that material. That being said, the themes and characters are so insidious that it’ll probably be only meant for a niche audience that’s open to watching a film which such despicable protagonists. I’m almost tempted to say that Apt Pupil should be required reading for high schoolers who have an unhealthy fascination for the mythic evils of the Nazis. Because who knows which teen with a Twitter account could be the next Todd?
And who knows how many Todds there will be?
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