Right on the money as he always is, Stephen King - with his co-writer son Owen King - addresses here a premise that is ridiculously and soberingly topical. What is it that could bring down society in such a dramatically short space of time? The withdrawing of the women.
The sleeping sickness that affects women only initially starts in the lower half of the world and rapidly progresses to the northern continents. If a woman falls asleep, she is immediately cocooned within a cobweb like shroud. Should anyone attempt to remove the fibres, the sleeper immediately wakes and does her best to bludgeon to death whoever was foolish enough to wake her from her slumber.
A small town in Appalachia struggles to cope with the anarchy that immediately follows as more women fall asleep. In this town there is a women’s prison. For the women that are still awake as one day rolls into the next, the fight to keep awake is only their first battle. The appearance of the mysterious and beautiful Evie, seemingly immune to “Aurora”, and an efficient killer to boot, results in her transport to the prison where things are rapidly falling apart. Does she need to be protected, or does she need to be killed in order to save the women of the town?