Writer: Jeff Whitehead
Adapted From a Film By: George A. Romero
Artist: Ryan Carr
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
Publisher: Storm King Comics
Publication Date: June 2025
The problem with adaptation is that sometimes, you do something to the work, and it all just falls apart. The Amusement Park is a long thought lost film by famed horror director George A Romero. Commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, The Amusement Park is a surrealist exploration of how society treats people, especially its elderly. In some regards, this might be the bleakest film Romero ever made, showing the degradation of a man’s spirit culminating in him being left a sobbing broken mess, doomed to be unable to warn the next sap who thinks he can have a good time. And it’s quite possibly one of his best, and I was happy to see it get a release in 2019, before my soul died from watching it.
However, with this adaptation, we see a softening of that experience. Now, to be clear, you can feel the love Jeff Whitehead, Ryan Carr, and Marshall Dillon have for Romero. And, were this an original work, I could find some things to recommend, while still limiting it to a fine comic. There’s a haunting sense to how Carr draws the world and the people in it. And Whitehead utilizes the comic medium to a decent degree.
The problem is… Well, for starters, they add a wraparound to the story. One of a young man hearing the story in a bar in Pennsylvania. This all leads to a quite banal twist of the young man actually being the old man from the story, who forgot he was the old man. It feels weak, is what I’m saying. What’s more, it gives the old man a specificity in that rather than being an old man, he’s William Lincoln. He has a wife and kids, he worked as a business man. And he’s trapped in this Creepshow esque twist ending.
What made the film work was the sheer starkness. There’s no easy answers when watching the film. You’re just left with the bleak reality of the world as it breaks people in small, petulant ways until you’re left a bloodied mess that can’t even die. Indeed, we can see further failings of the adaptation through the actual depiction of the final image.
In the comic, it’s a small panel of the old man sitting in a chair. We see the moment juxtaposed with the old man’s younger self entering the amusement park. But what made the final image all the more poignant was the vastness of the old man. A stronger ending would have isolated the old man to his own page rather than juxtapose him with several other images. Furthermore, we can see the corner of the room in the panel instead of the vast incomprehensible void he finds himself within. In turn, the harshness is softened by the sheer smallness of the panel.
Additionally, there’s Carr’s use of shadows. Specifically with regards to this moment, the film had both men’s eyes visible to see. We can see the heartbreak and sorrow in actor Lincoln Maazel’s face as it’s broken by the world as well as the seemingly youthful optimism he enters the Amusement Park with.
On the whole, it’s not worth the time. It’s not the worst comic, but it’s just not a good enough adaptation to recommend.
The Amusement Park is available now
Read more great reviews from The Beat!
