ORANGE — “Castle Rock,” the original horror-suspense series from the on-demand video streaming service Hulu, is expected to premiere its second season Wednesday, Oct. 23.
As with Season 1, much of the second season was filmed in Orange, which serves as the series’ titular setting, Castle Rock, a fictional Maine town from the universe of horror novelist Stephen King.
On Wednesday, the show’s Facebook page, “Castle Rock on Hulu,” delivered a spooky experience for those anticipating the second season of the show. The Facebook Live video depicts a 13-minute drive down a winding, wooded road at night.
The video is filmed in first-person, as if the viewer were the vehicle’s driver, and at several points dark figures appear in the road, causing the driver to swerve and narrowly avoid crashing several times. On the radio, several stations play segments with Stephen King references, like a talk from local fictional author Richard Bachman — “Richard Bachman” was the real-life King’s pen-name for several of his earliest works.
At the end of the video, the car comes to a halt and the video switches to a brief trailer. In the trailer, the character Annie Wilkes, played by Lizzy Caplan (“Mean Girls,” “The Interview,” “Masters of Sex”), is shown at work as a nurse in a hospital. Wilkes appears frantic, and vomits while hearing voices before intentionally shutting the hospital’s power supply down. She runs down a hallway, leaving viewers to wonder just what she will be up to.
Wilkes is the central character from King’s novel “Misery,” in which the deranged nurse imprisons and tortures her favorite author. The character was previously played by Kathy Bates in an Oscar-winning adaptation of the novel. According to Hulu, Season 2 of “Castle Rock” will focus on a younger Wilkes prior to the events of “Misery.”
The series’ second season also stars Tim Robbins (“The Shawshank Redemption”) and Garrett Hedlund (“Friday Night Lights,” “Troy,” “Tron: Legacy”).