Most critics come down in favour, ten of fifteen, and the praise gathers in the same two places. The first is the cast: Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo are named again and again, with several reviews saying the ensemble is what holds the series together. The second is Richard Price’s scripts, which more than one critic reckons improve on Stephen King’s novel. The atmosphere gets steady credit too: the unsettling opening episode, the score, the sense of grounded dread, and comparisons to Fincher and to True Detective turn up more than once.
The reservations cluster around the join between police procedural and supernatural horror. Several critics find the series more convincing as a grim murder mystery than as a ghost story, and say it loses grip and sprawls once the strange elements take over. The spread is wide. The Guardian and Variety are the firmest dissenters, both finding it slow and thin on character, though even the Guardian singles out Erivo as the performance that lifts it.