There are creepy trailers, and then there’s The Institute. The chilling new series from MGM+ dropped its first few episodes this week after a buzzy premiere at SXSW London, and it’s already being dubbed one of the “most disturbing Stephen King adaptations in years.”
Don’t let the teen cast fool you - the horror here is no PG-13 fluff. “It’s harrowing,” Cavell said at the premiere. “We didn’t want it to be relentlessly dark, but this isn’t about a hero coming to save the day. These kids know if they want out, they have to get themselves out. That felt like a very timely message.”
Reactions have been swift: “I watched it and kind of regret it - but no, actually it was great.” Another said after the screening: . “It’s terrifying and one of the most disturbing adaptations I’ve seen.”
Adapted from King’s 2019 novel and brought to the screen by Mr. Mercedes director Jack Bender and The Stand’s Benjamin Cavell, The Institute centres on a sinister government facility hidden in the Maine woods, where gifted children are held against their will and subjected to chilling tests.
Think Stranger Things meets Room 237, with a dash of X-Men gone rogue. Joe Freeman (son of Martin Freeman) leads the cast as Luke, a boy genius with telekinetic powers who is drugged and kidnapped from his own bedroom.
The trailer shows him waking up in a sterile dorm with cold lighting and the chilling line: “You’re not kids here. If you break a rule, there are grown-up consequences.”
Mary-Louise Parker, in full icy menace mode, plays the Institute’s director Ms Sigsby, and Ben Barnes stars as a haunted ex-cop in a nearby town, unknowingly orbiting the horror.
Critics at the SXSW screening called the first episode “perfectly paced” and “chillingly observed,” with one reviewer admitting that while chilling - they’d have happily binged the whole season on the spot.
Even Stephen King himself sent in a recorded intro, grinning with pride.The Institute may have upped the characters’ ages from King’s original (they’re now teens, not tweens), but that hasn’t blunted the dread.
From scissor-wielding guards to psychic torture and eerie telepathic link-ups, the trailer alone is enough to send you scrambling for a comfort light.
And thanks to Parker’s quietly monstrous performance and a breakout turn from Freeman, this might be the scariest King adaptation since Gerald’s Game.
MGM+ will release the first two episodes of The Institute on July 13, with new episodes weekly.
