Stephen King Month: Misery

5 Stars - Exceptional

In 1987, Stephen King wrote a fantasy novel called Eyes of the Dragon, it was a pretty bad book and a huge critical failure. However its main critics were the fans of King's previous works, who only wanted horror and didn't accept him writing anything else. As something of a response to this he wrote one of his best books ever, Misery, which deals with a writer trying to escape always writing the same books, but being held back by a fan, although Misery took it to a disturbingly dark level.

Misery is the story of Paul Sheldon, successful author of the Misery series, a number of romantic fiction novels about the heroine Misery Chastain. Paul has, in his most recent book, Misery's Child, killed Misery; finally freeing himself to start some serious work, namely his new novel, Fast Cars. Upon finishing Fast Cars, Paul has a car accident whilst driving in a snow storm, leading to his car flying off the road and his legs being shattered. He is rescued by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, who takes Paul to her home to recuperate, she is also his number one fan. Some time passes and Paul realises that there's something a little off about Annie, this is brought to a terrifying head when she reads that Misery is dead. She snaps and forces Paul to burn his only manuscript of Fast Cars and to start writing a new novel, where Misery comes back from the dead. Or else.

The film is wonderful, getting across great, realistic characters who you at times sympathise with and at others despise. It also manages to maintain the balance between horror and comedy, something that is important to the story to give the viewers a break from Annie's insanity every once in a while.

As an adaptation it is pretty good, Paul and Annie feel spot on and the tension and uncomfortable nature of the book are brought across well. This is a strange example of where I believe what they added, in the shape of the police chief Buster searching fro Paul, actually made the film better than it would have been without him, as otherwise seeing just Paul and Annie in the house would have got stagnant and boring. A couple of changes were made, most notably the difference of the hobbling scene, being changed from amputation to ankle breaking; but I feel this is actually an appropriate change as the film isn't as unpleasant as the book, Annie seems a bit more together, and an amputation scene might have felt out of place.

Paul Sheldon Used To Write For A Living. Now He's Writing To Stay Alive.

In short, a fantastic film and a terrifying book. Also the only one of King's books that I'm aware of that has been adapted to a stage play.