Misery Parent Guide

Victorian romances starring Misery Chastain are flying off the shelves, but author, Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is growing tired of them. En route to New York from his writer’s lodge in Colorado with a new manuscript, Paul has a nasty car accident. Luckily for him, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) just so happened to be driving past, and even more fortunately, she happens to be a fan - his number one fan, in fact. But while Paul recovers in her home, he starts to realize that there may be more to Annie than he thought.

As I’ve said before, Stephen King adaptations are a real roll of the dice. You could get lucky and come out with The Shining, but more often than not, you get something like The Dark Tower. This is one of the rare gems to make it from page to screen relatively unscathed.

What makes this movie shine are the performances of its leads. Given the isolated nature of the story, if either of the stars had fallen even slightly flat, the entire movie would have collapsed on itself like a bad souffle. Thankfully, that’s not the case, and James Caan plays Paul Sheldon’s pained resistance brilliantly. But where this movie really pops is Kathy Bates’ completely unhinged and over-the-top performance as Annie Wilkes. She has this uncanny ability to be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen, all while being as nice and small-town charming as she can be.

Unfortunately, that means watching the movie is sort of like giving yourself a 90 minute panic attack. If you’re not excessively anxious and would like to be, then this is the movie for you. The tension creeps up and up until by the last half hour you’re looking for any excuse to go get snacks or take a bathroom break just so you can breathe. That alone makes it unsuitable for children, but when combined with the grotesque violence, this doesn’t exactly qualify as family viewing. Even with the minimal profanity, sex, and drugs, and even if you took out all the violence, this is just too tense for younger viewers.

But if you can manage the tension (or you’re just less anxious than I am to start with), this is well worth watching for the incredible acting and skilled directing. Every moment on screen is loaded with horrifying possibilities - and some of them are even worse than you’d imagined. Altogether, this probably makes for a terrible movie to watch while you’re stuck indoors…especially if you’ve been getting weird vibes from some of your housemates.