The Institute TV Review: The Stephen King adaptation tries to blend elements of It with X-Men

Plot: The story of teen genius Luke Ellis who is kidnapped and awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.

Review: As a die-hard fan of Stephen King, I approach each and every adaptation of his work with a grain of salt. I hope they will be good, but the results can be hit or miss depending on the talent involved. There have been several years where we have gotten multiple movies and series based on or inspired by the writing of King, but 2025 is shaping up to be the most prolific. While The Monkey and The Life of Chuck have already debuted to solid reviews, we still have The Long Walk, The Running Man, and It: Welcome To Derry to look forward to. Before those three highly anticipated projects premiere later in the year, we have The Institute, an eight-episode limited series adapting the 2019 novel of the same name. Hailing from producer and director Jack Bender, The Institute is classic King with a large cast including teenagers with powers, shadowy adult leaders, and supernatural abilities that defy explanation. It also struggles with whether it wants to be a limited series or an ongoing one.

The Institute follows two narratives set in very different places. On one side, Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) is a brilliant fifteen-year-old kid who harbors telekinetic abilities. One night, he is kidnapped and placed in the titular facility run by the mysterious Mrs. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker). The Institute is where Mrs. Sigsby claims the special kids are saving the world. Still, it must be subjected to brutal testing involving drugs and life-threatening experiments performed by Dr. Hendricks (Robert Joy) and the evil staff. Luke befriends other kids, including Kalisha (Simone Miller), Nick (Fionn Laird), and young Avery (Viggo Hanvelt), who live in the relative safety of The Institute and fear being sent to the mysterious Back Half, where no other kid has returned. As Luke, Kalisha, and Nick plot a way to escape from The Institute, they must figure out why they are being kept against their will. Stephen King has done some of his best writing when following teen characters as he did in It, Hearts in Atlantis, and The Body/Stand By Me. These characters are all interesting, with the focus on what their Shining-like powers are being used for as a key element to keeping The Institute interesting.

The other narrative follows former police officer Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes), who arrives in the small Maine town close to the Institute. Taking a job as a night-knocker (a volunteer who serves as a glorified security guard), Tim becomes familiar with the residents, including officer Wendy Gullickson (Hannah Galway) and local homeless woman, Annie (Mary Walsh), who seems to know more about the mysterious facility than most. Barnes is a great protagonist as Tim, giving him a heroic yet everyman quality as he balances a real-world perspective and witnesses increasingly supernatural elements as he starts investigating what is happening at The Institute. Barnes is a charismatic actor who has been waiting for a role like this, which makes excellent use of his screen presence while not making him play another antagonist. Without divulging how, Tim and Luke’s storylines converge and bring the narratives together towards a conclusion that will reveal the truth of what Mrs. Sigsby, Dr. Hendricks, and head of security Mr. Stackhouse (Julian Richings) are really up to.

At eight episodes, The Institute is very faithful to the novel, which may also be a negative for this adaptation. As much as I love the work of King, he has often struggled to bring his notoriously epic stories to a satisfying conclusion. The book and series struggle to make us care as much for Tim’s storyline as we do about Luke and the kids trapped in The Institute. When they do come together, they do so in a way that careens towards a massive ending sequence that is sometimes difficult to follow. The series finale plays more like a series finale, leaving things open just enough to either be ambiguous or tease a sophomore run could happen, something that would have to be wholly original. King’s novel ended somewhat anticlimactically, and the series makes that even worse by turning it from an ending to a mild cliffhanger. Some of the changes made from the book are welcome, especially backstory for Mrs. Sigsby, a far more interesting character here, thanks to Mary-Louise Parker, compared to the wholly evil villain from the book.

As with many King novels, shortly after it was published in 2019, the rights were snatched up by Spyglass with David E. Kelley attached to adapt it. Having previously worked on the King series, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider, Kelley is not involved with the finished series, having handed the reins to Jack Bender and showrunner Benjamin Cavell. Cavell is best known for creating and showrunning Josh Boone’s 2020 series adaptation of The Stand and SEAL Team. Cavell boasts the most writing credits on The Institute, followed by Sam Sheridan (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan). Jack Bender, director of Lost, Alias, and MGM+ hit series From, is credited on multiple The Institute episodes, which share many visual similarities with that genre series. The series never ventures into the same horror elements as From, but it does have some grisly visuals that reminded me that King’s balance of genres is one of his strongest talents.

The Institute has all of the best parts of Stephen King’s best stories: layered and realistic characters, intriguing plots involving supernatural elements grounded in a realistic setting, and solid antagonists you root against. The series also struggles with King’s common weaknesses, which become apparent as the final episodes unfold. I definitely enjoyed this series far more than some other small-screen King adaptations. Still, I had hoped the ending would have been more conclusive than ambiguous, leaving the door open for unnecessary future entries in this story. I enjoyed the young actors and a long-overdue showcase for Ben Barnes. Still, The Institute is not as scary as From, a series that makes far better use of an ensemble cast dealing with supernatural mysteries.

The Institute premieres on July 13th on MGM+.