Every Stephen King film adap­ta­tion – ranked

With an exhaus­tive sea­son at the BFI South­bank in full swing, two major Hol­ly­wood movies on cin­e­mat­ic release in the form of IT and The Dark Tow­er, a TV ver­sion of ​‘The Mist’ and detec­tive nov­el ​‘Mr Mer­cedes’ still both air­ing and at least two new films on the way, it is safe to say that Stephen King fever is in the air. There is obvi­ous­ly some­thing innate­ly cin­e­mat­ic and pri­mal in King’s work as a writer across both hor­ror and sen­ti­men­tal Amer­i­cana, and adap­ta­tions large and small have been ubiq­ui­tous in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma over the past four decades.

With this in mind, Ele­na Laz­ic, Manuela Laz­ic and Paul Ridd have con­duct­ed a full sur­vey of cin­e­mat­ic King iter­a­tions, rank­ing by qual­i­ty and faith to the writer’s spir­it in order to get some sense of the enor­mous wealth of Stephen King con­tent avail­able on film. Var­i­ous TV adap­ta­tions – some icon­ic (the minis­eries of IT and The Stand for instance), some less so – are also worth seek­ing out, as are King’s con­tri­bu­tions to shows like The Twi­light Zone. But for the pur­pos­es of this list, we’ve stuck to fea­ture film ver­sions released the­atri­cal­ly, exclud­ing DTV films, sequels and spin-offs unre­lat­ed to the author’s work. Enjoy.

Stephen King’s first direc­to­r­i­al effort has so far remained his last, and there is no mys­tery why. Made while the author/​director was admit­ted­ly high on cocaine the entire time, Max­i­mum Over­drive restores all the author’s affec­tion for weird col­lo­qui­alisms but none of his tal­ent for ter­ror or thrill. Yet things starts pret­ty well, as machines of all kind start to act on their own and vio­lent­ly kill peo­ple, even chil­dren. Prob­lems begin when, for no good rea­son, the film morphs into a sort of bad Chris­tine, where big autonomous trucks start attack­ing a ran­dom group of peo­ple seclud­ed at a gas sta­tion. Excru­ci­at­ing­ly unevent­ful and slow, focused on com­plete­ly unlike­able char­ac­ters, and an absolute waste of Emilio Estevez’s tal­ent, King’s audio­vi­su­al cre­ation bare­ly qual­i­fies as a movie, and is far from an enjoy­able ride. Ele­na Lazic

Do not be deceived by its entic­ing title: Grave­yard Shift is one of the most grat­ing King adap­ta­tions there is. At an old-fash­ioned cot­ton mill, an employ­ee is found dead in what looks like a par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some acci­dent. Wast­ing no time in griev­ing or in inves­ti­gat­ing into the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this graph­ic death, the ruth­less boss of the mill imme­di­ate­ly hires a new employ­ee to rid his mill of a seri­ous rat infes­ta­tion. The pres­ence of the unwel­come rodents puts every­one on edge, and Grave­yard Shift is one of those King adap­ta­tions where the char­ac­ters spend most of their time shout­ing at each oth­er or spurt­ing out weird excla­ma­tives that are nev­er used out­side of King’s writ­ing. The film’s few scares and gory moments fail to com­pen­sate for the fact that the sto­ry real­ly isn’t about any­thing oth­er than a big mon­ster liv­ing in the base­ment. EL

The few sto­ries that King wrote under the pseu­do­nym Richard Bach­man are arguably more vio­lent and cyn­i­cal than his oth­er work, and sci­ence fic­tion nov­el The Run­ning Man is one of them. Paul Michael Glaser’s film adap­ta­tion how­ev­er turns what was a potent cri­tique of America’s thirst for vio­lent enter­tain­ment, into an Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger vehi­cle of the most mind­less and sil­ly kind. Schwarzeneg­ger plays a wrong­ly con­vict­ed crim­i­nal coerced to par­tic­i­pate in ​‘The Run­ning Man’, a Hunger Games-type TV show where play­ers must escape real death. Ini­tial­ly a satire of a total­i­tar­i­an 2025 Amer­i­ca, the film is lit­tle more than a gung-ho cat­a­stro­phe that rel­ish­es vio­lence rather than con­demn it at all, com­ing clos­er to the ridicu­lous non­sense of the Roller­ball remake than it does to the slick intel­li­gence of Total Recall. EL

When a film begins with shots on the yel­low lines of a dark road very sim­i­lar to the icon­ic open­ing sequence from David Lynch’s Lost High­way, one bet­ter start brac­ing for impact. Arguably not one of King’s best sto­ries, Dolan’s Cadil­lac makes for a painful­ly tedious and offen­sive film. After his wife Eliz­a­beth wit­ness­es a vio­lent meet­ing between pros­ti­tute traf­fick­ers, Robin­son (Wes Bent­ley) tries to pro­tect her from pos­si­ble revenge from Dolan (Chris­t­ian Slater). Now hid­ing in a hotel under FBI pro­tec­tion, the cou­ple keeps try­ing to have a baby and each inter­course is mer­ci­less­ly shown on screen. Mean­while, Slater shouts ideas about racism and the Amer­i­can dream to no one in par­tic­u­lar. When Eliz­a­beth is even­tu­al­ly killed, Wes Bent­ley – pos­si­bly the actor with the small­est range of all the peo­ple work­ing in Hol­ly­wood today – tries to show his anger by scream­ing. He even­tu­al­ly gets his revenge when he man­ages to dri­ve Dolan’s car into a hole, and after more scream­ing, buries him alive. Manuela Laz­ic

At the time of this pub­li­ca­tion, India had pro­duced two adap­ta­tions of King’s work. Almost 10 years after Woh, the Indi­an ver­sion of IT, Anurag Kashyap direct­ed a 128-minute movie inspired by King’s short sto­ry ​‘Quit­ters, Inc.’ Both the orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al and the Amer­i­can hor­ror seg­ment from port­man­teau hor­ror Cat’s Eye relied on the brevi­ty of the sto­ry to make its deeply cyn­i­cal con­ceit work. Kashyap (lat­er of Gangs of Wassey­pur fame) extends the same sto­ry into an excru­ci­at­ing­ly long film that is just as cyn­i­cal but nev­er fun­ny. A con­trived end­ing tries very hard to turn the basic con­cept – tor­tur­ing your loved ones to make you quit smok­ing – into some­thing more pro­found about bod­ies and souls. It just doesn’t work. EL

Anthol­o­gy hor­ror movies are often an oppor­tu­ni­ty for far­fetched and con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­ple sto­ries to make their way to the screen. ​‘The Cat from Hell’ is the final seg­ment in TFTDS and fails to save the film despite its rather amus­ing gory moments. A head­hunter is hired by an old man to exter­mi­nate the cat that has been killing all the elder­ly res­i­dents in the man’s goth­ic man­sion, one after the oth­er. The charis­mat­ic New York Dolls front­man David Johansen runs after and exclaims wit­ty remarks at the mis­chie­vous cat, until the ani­mal reveals his more bes­tial side in a tru­ly dis­gust­ing and insane­ly ludi­crous attack. Ulti­mate­ly, this is noth­ing more than a game of cat and mouse. ML

Despite the star wattage of leads John Cusack and Samuel L Jack­son, this much-delayed big screen adap­ta­tion of King’s epic 2006 nov­el suf­fers from the obvi­ous com­pro­mis­es involved in its cre­ation. Orig­i­nal­ly pitched as a big bud­get stu­dio project with Eli Roth attached to direct, Tod Williams’ film lacks the bud­get, spe­cial effects or artistry need­ed to ren­der its depic­tion of a world­wide apoc­a­lypse con­vinc­ing or inter­est­ing. The film fails to deliv­er on its unnerv­ing open­ing, in which a dead­ly pulse emit­ted from cell­phones trans­forms a busy air­port into chaos, its occu­pants turned into mur­der­ous zom­bies. Lack­lus­tre act­ing, a plod­ding road movie nar­ra­tive and a final, woe­ful pay-off com­pound the sense of dis­ap­point­ment. The film is mem­o­rable most­ly for one extra­or­di­nary and tran­scen­dent use of the Trololol song. Paul Ridd

An exer­cise in exact­ly how not to con­dense the nar­ra­tive and the­mat­ic com­plex­i­ties of an over­long and unwieldy nov­el, Lawrence Kasdan’s 2002 film Dream­catch­er pos­i­tive­ly reeks of stu­dio inter­fer­ence and com­pro­mise. After an effec­tive open­ing act in which a group of bois­ter­ous male friends con­vene in a moun­tain cot­tage to hunt deer, the film swift­ly becomes inco­her­ent once a dead­ly, fae­cal mon­ster is intro­duced, gov­ern­ment agents appear on the scene and a shared secret from the men’s child­hood is revealed. Messy, noisy and often com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble, the film has some moments of real ter­ror, but is too often too lost in its mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tives to be any­thing oth­er than an inter­est­ing fol­ly from a tal­ent­ed direc­tor. PR

Per­haps the most telling fac­toid about this 1992 film and its 1996 sequel Lawn­mow­er Man 2: Beyond Cyber­space is that Stephen King fought to have his name removed from all pub­lic­i­ty mate­ri­als. A mess of ear­ly CGI, noisy silli­ness and bizarre sci­ence fic­tion mus­ings, both films leave nar­ra­tive log­ic and effec­tive atmos­phere at the door, with their camp plea­sures very much a mat­ter of dimin­ish­ing returns across their mer­ci­ful­ly brief run­times. PR

Among all the the­atri­cal­ly released King adap­ta­tions, Rid­ing the Bul­let is the one that comes the clos­est to a 2000s teen movie. The film fol­lows Alan Park­er (Jonathan Jack­son) a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent and artist who feels mis­un­der­stood by every­one, even though that is obvi­ous­ly not true. Hitch­hik­ing one night to get to the hos­pi­tal where his moth­er (Bar­bara Her­shey) has just been admit­ted, his encoun­ters with sev­er­al creepy indi­vid­u­als – includ­ing a decom­pos­ing David Arquette – grad­u­al­ly reveal the nature of the trau­ma behind his per­pet­u­al death wish: the death of his father. Direc­tor Mick Gar­ris was also behind the King-approved TV adap­ta­tion of The Shin­ing, and he def­i­nite­ly has a real under­stand­ing of the emo­tion­al­i­ty of King’s work. Rid­ing the Bul­let is well-made, and the relo­ca­tion to the late 1960s allows for a deli­cious cri­tique of hip­pie cul­ture. Yet with every sin­gle nar­ra­tive event giv­en with the same lev­el of inten­si­ty – way up to 11 – the film even­tu­al­ly grows tir­ing and nev­er tru­ly lifts off. EL

Com­bin­ing both King’s con­cerns for the writer­ly life and the cheat­ing wife, Secret Win­dow stars John­ny Depp as Mort, a writer who retires to his coun­try house after sur­pris­ing his wife sleep­ing with anoth­er man. Out of nowhere comes anoth­er writer, Shoot­er (John Tur­tur­ro), who claims that Depp stole one of his sto­ries. With increas­ing vio­lence, Shoot­er elim­i­nates every one who could cor­rob­o­rate Mort’s claim that he wrote the sto­ry first. Depp’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly twitchy per­for­mance makes sense at first, when the dis­il­lu­sioned Mort suf­fers from writer’s block and can­not be both­ered to care about any­thing, wear­ing the same old robe every day. It becomes an issue once the extreme vio­lence starts, as Mort still doesn’t seem to care very much. Because of Depp’s detached per­for­mance and a rushed third act that seems cru­el­ly indif­fer­ent to the hor­ror of the mur­ders, the grue­some end­ing does not feel like the shock­ing reveal the film was build­ing up to, but rather like a gra­tu­itous and unpleas­ant fuck you. EL

Reviled by King him­self, Mark L Lester’s 1985 film suf­fers in the ​‘what might have been?’ stakes since John Car­pen­ter was orig­i­nal­ly signed up to make the film with Burt Lan­cast­er in a key role. As it is, the film has its qual­i­ties, most mem­o­rably an ear­ly, intense per­for­mance from Drew Bar­ry­more as a young girl with psy­cho-kinet­ic abil­i­ties, and a ter­rif­ic score from Tan­ger­ine Dream. Though lat­er bogged down in the com­plex­i­ties of a gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy led by the mys­te­ri­ous Cap­tain Hol­lis­ter (anoth­er excel­lent King role for Mar­tin Sheen), the film’s ear­ly scenes have a hyp­not­ic qual­i­ty, jump­ing through time to set up the sto­ry with a clar­i­ty and ele­gance absent from King’s often clunky prose. A gen­uine­ly awful sequel, Firestarter 2: Rekin­dled, went straight to video in 2002 and is mem­o­rable main­ly for per­for­mances from screen icons Den­nis Hop­per and Mal­colm Mac­dow­ell, both look­ing thor­ough­ly embar­rassed through­out. PR

An attempt to cram a world cre­at­ed over eight books into one 90-minute movie, The Dark Tow­er is flat and for­get­table when it should be epic and exhil­a­rat­ing. Unlike most King works, this is an adven­ture fan­ta­sy epic that is for the most part not set in our real world, yet the premise – a young boy in a dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly who dreams of a vio­lent fan­ta­sy world – is as King as it gets. Still, few of the author’s usu­al con­cerns and obses­sions are present in Niko­laj Arcel’s adap­ta­tion, which fol­lows a sim­ple A‑to‑B nar­ra­tive with ran­dom bits of world­build­ing thrown in. The pres­ence of Idris Elba and Matthew McConaugh­ey, both usu­al­ly so over-the-top, should at least guar­an­tee some laughs, but the film man­ages to even make these idio­syn­crat­ic actors unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly flat and unin­ter­est­ing. EL

What made King’s nov­el – and, to some degree, Mary Lambert’s 1989 adap­ta­tion – so thrilling and sad was the sense that, although the epony­mous ceme­tery does indeed have a mor­bid pull on peo­ple, the Creed fam­i­ly at the cen­tre of the sto­ry was head­ing for doom from the start. Know­ing the per­son­al­i­ties and hang-ups of both the father Louis Creed and his wife Rachel was instru­men­tal in under­stand­ing why she was so afraid of death, and why he was so eager to escape it. How­ev­er, the 2019 adap­ta­tion is more inter­est­ed in the gore and jump-scare poten­tial of King’s con­cept than in its emo­tion­al pow­er or in its appeal to our fear of los­ing our loved ones. This approach could have made a kind of sense with­in a satir­i­cal, over-the-top treat­ment of the source mate­r­i­al, but the choice of an extreme­ly seri­ous tone hits the final nail in the cof­fin. The soil of a fan’s heart is stonier. EL

Since Bri­an DePalma’s sub­lime 1976 orig­i­nal, an under­rat­ed direct-to-TV sequel The Rage: Car­rie 2 as well as an ill-fat­ed 2002 TV movie adap­ta­tion have both attempt­ed to bring new insights to King’s pri­mal sto­ry of teen shame, repressed vio­lence and pubes­cent hor­ror. Boys Don’t Cry direc­tor Kim­ber­ly Peirce’s 2013 remake suf­fers from restraint in com­par­i­son to these three oth­er films, being nei­ther shock­ing or vio­lent enough to do jus­tice to its tal­ent­ed cast and impres­sive cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Chloë Grace Moretz is mis­cast in the title role, being too whole­some to shake off the mem­o­ry of Sis­sy Spacek’s tremen­dous orig­i­nal per­for­mance. Julianne Moore, chew­ing the scenery in all of her too brief screen time, is wast­ed in the role of Carrie’s mon­strous moth­er. PR

The usu­al­ly qui­et small town of Tarker’s Mills is shak­en by a series of grue­some mur­ders, as a nasty were­wolf seems obsessed with rid­ding the small town off any ​‘weak’ indi­vid­u­als: whether they are are alco­holics, sui­ci­dal, or sim­ply lazy, the vic­tims all die for their sins in hor­ri­ble cir­cum­stances. When young para­plegic boy Mar­ty (Corey Haim) starts putting the pieces togeth­er, he and his old­er sis­ter seek the help of the only adult crazy enough to believe them, Uncle Red (Gary Busey), him­self a job­less alco­holic. King would pull off his love let­ter to ​‘losers’ much more con­vinc­ing­ly with IT, pub­lished just a few years after the novel­la Sil­ver Bul­let is based on, and this may account for some of the film’s weak­ness­es. Although Busey’s com­mit­ted per­for­mance gives it a lit­tle boost, the film feels rather phoned in and the var­i­ous ele­ments of the sto­ry nev­er gel into a tru­ly coher­ent and mean­ing­ful nar­ra­tive. EL

Con­sid­er­ing King’s love for the sen­sa­tion­al, the upset­ting and the obses­sive, it is only nat­ur­al that some of his sto­ries would fea­ture ser­i­al killers of the human, non-super­nat­ur­al kind. In A Good Mar­riage, a seem­ing­ly hap­py cou­ple with a beau­ti­ful house, ful­ly grown kids, and a very com­fort­able life, go through a bit of a rough patch when Dar­cy (Joan Allen) finds out that her hus­band Bob (Antho­ny LaPaglia) is a want­ed ser­i­al killer. A vicious pow­er play ensues, with Darcy’s emo­tions rang­ing from guilt to dis­gust, rage to fear, as she tries to save both her life and her mar­riage. Allen and LaPaglia deliv­er con­vinc­ing per­for­mances, yet a too qui­et and restrained direct­ing damp­ens the nail-bit­ing­ly tense and emo­tion­al sto­ry of a woman on the verge of a ner­vous break­down. EL

It is per­haps harsh to con­trast the two films, but Scott Hicks’ short sto­ry adap­ta­tion Hearts in Atlantis owes such an evi­dent debt to Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me in its mood, look and the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that the com­par­i­son is inevitable. Visu­al­ly stun­ning, well act­ed, but alto­geth­er too sil­ly and far-fetched to real­ly res­onate, the film lacks the emo­tion­al heft, enor­mous sense of per­son­al loss or sense of time from Reiner’s film, and for a film so pre­oc­cu­pied with its cen­tral character’s inabil­i­ty to for­get or escape the past, it fades into mem­o­ry all too quick­ly. A syrupy con­fec­tion. PR

King’s mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion for the weak­ness behind the façade of domes­tic bliss in the Amer­i­can nuclear fam­i­ly is prac­ti­cal­ly a con­stant through­out his oeu­vre. Only the super­nat­ur­al comes close to rivalling this obses­sion, and both com­bine per­fect­ly in the fig­ure of Cujo, a usu­al­ly cud­dly St Bernard turned evil after a nasty bat bite on the nose. In won­der­ful Stephen King fash­ion, the asso­ci­a­tion of this breed of pro­tec­tive dog with the ide­al Amer­i­can fam­i­ly is made hys­ter­i­cal­ly, fright­en­ing­ly overt when Cujo attacks a cheat­ing woman and her son. Stuck in her car with her lit­tle boy, try­ing to sur­vive the sum­mer heat and escape from Cujo, this woman is sym­bol­i­cal­ly giv­en a chance to remem­ber the val­ue of fam­i­ly and to prove her worth as a moth­er. Despite a delight­ful­ly bonkers premise and a great lead per­for­mance by Dee Wal­lace, Cujo is ulti­mate­ly pre­dictable and monot­o­nous. EL

King’s predilec­tion for anti­heroes often means that film adap­ta­tions of his work give cen­tre stage to usu­al­ly dis­creet char­ac­ter actors. Even if the plot isn’t the most thrilling, the Miguel Fer­rers and Ted Levines of this world get to flex more of their act­ing mus­cles at last – and often end up sav­ing the sil­ly movie from com­plete obliv­ion. The Man­gler is as dumb as it sounds: a machine in a laun­dry fac­to­ry starts killing employ­ees and the Dev­il is some­how involved. As the world-weary and crude police offi­cer typ­i­cal of King’s work, Ted Levine dis­plays a cap­ti­vat­ing tal­ent that is con­cealed in bet­ter films such as The Silence of the Lambs, where he only played small and lim­it­ed parts. Being able to throw holy water and recite Bible vers­es at an evil tum­ble dry­er with con­vic­tion sure­ly is the mark of a great actor. ML

Bring­ing Stephen King’s trade­mark meet­ing of the mun­dane and the goth­ic to the cin­e­ma screen has proven a dif­fi­cult feat to pull off. While there are no blood­thirsty wash­ing machines in The Night Fli­er, the vam­piresque killer does ride a plane to some­how make up for his lack of lev­i­tat­ing pow­ers. More wor­ry­ing yet is how the twist is made evi­dent right at the start: the film’s hero, Miguel Ferrer’s nihilis­tic reporter of the super­nat­ur­al, is the only oth­er human char­ac­ter dri­ving a plane too. Through the need­less­ly con­fus­ing detours of this gross and grotesque sto­ry, Fer­rer hams it up per­fect­ly, giv­ing every swear word and groan the impact that noth­ing else in the film can pro­vide. Giv­en a chance to final­ly be a lead­ing man, he turns the film and its amal­gam of absurd scenes into a showreel for his act­ing tal­ents. ML

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of The Usu­al Sus­pects, it’s hard to imag­ine Bryan Singer intend­ed his sopho­more fea­ture as a glo­ri­ous exam­ple of high camp. On paper, the sto­ry of a young student’s cat and mouse games with an elder­ly ex-Nazi in a qui­et Amer­i­can sub­urb may have seemed like the stuff of awards, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a tow­er­ing Ian McK­ellen in the lead. How­ev­er, the tone of the film is so height­ened, its melo­dra­mat­ic plot­ting so hard to take seri­ous­ly and its homo­erot­ic over­tones played so brazen­ly, that the film quick­ly descends into abject silli­ness and is best enjoyed as a mag­nif­i­cent exer­cise in failed sin­cer­i­ty, rather than a seri­ous work of maudlin melo­dra­mat­ic fic­tion. PR

Released as both a two-part TV mini-series and a trun­cat­ed the­atri­cal fea­ture in 1979, Tobe Hooper’s atmos­pher­ic Salem’s Lot fea­tures an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly con­vinc­ing David Soul as a pop­u­lar nov­el­ist embroiled in a small town con­spir­a­cy involv­ing the con­tents of a mys­te­ri­ous cof­fin and an ancient vam­pir­ic spir­it. With a star­ry cast, includ­ing Elisha Cook Jr, James Mason and a nev­er-bet­ter George Dzundza, Hooper’s film coher­ent­ly draws togeth­er its var­i­ous con­vo­lut­ed nar­ra­tive strands, set­ting the cen­tral super­nat­ur­al mys­tery against the back­drop of pet­ty dis­putes with­in a fun­da­men­tal­ly rot­ten New Eng­land com­mu­ni­ty. Some­times plod­ding, Salem’s Lot is nev­er­the­less an adroit chiller, earn­ing its three hour plus run­time with some gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fy­ing moments and a thor­ough­ly sat­is­fy­ing pay-off. Though lack­ing the visu­al inge­nu­ity or exper­i­men­ta­tion of Hooper’s most famous film The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre, Salem’s Lot deliv­ers a duti­ful­ly effec­tive ren­der­ing of King’s sto­ry. A less­er 2004 TV adap­ta­tion fades into mem­o­ry far faster than Hooper’s juicy chiller while a god-awful TV sequel fol­lowed in 1987. Hav­ing lit­tle to do with either King’s writ­ing or log­ic itself, A Return to Salem’s Lot is for com­pletists and masochists only. PR

Known as King’s most per­son­al nov­el, It fol­lows a groups of friends all unit­ed by their unpop­u­lar­i­ty – they are ​‘losers.’ When his younger broth­er sud­den­ly dis­ap­pears, 13 year old Bill (Jae­den Lieber­her) is deter­mined to inves­ti­gate and unveil what real­ly hap­pened. His friends all agree to help after they start expe­ri­enc­ing vivid hal­lu­ci­na­tions, where a ter­ri­fy­ing super­nat­ur­al clown shows them their worst fears realised. The key to over­pow­er­ing the mon­ster is real­is­ing that it isn’t real, and IT is a mov­ing sto­ry about how the sup­port and affec­tion of friends can help one over­come trau­ma – the long-term anguish about some­thing that only per­sists in the person’s mind, some­thing that isn’t real any­more. This sto­ry had already been adapt­ed into a mini-series in 1990, but in some ways, this new adap­ta­tion is more faith­ful to the source mate­r­i­al: we see a lot more of the mon­ster, and it’s meth­ods are much more detailed. Yet at the same time, this new film is too con­cerned with being lev­el-head­ed and real­is­tic, to prop­er­ly restore the sense of irra­tional, over­whelm­ing and pri­mal fear that is at the core of the sto­ry and which con­sti­tutes the true basis of iden­ti­ty for each of the char­ac­ters. EL

With a screen­play and orig­i­nal sce­nario from Stephen King, reg­u­lar King col­lab­o­ra­tor Mick Gar­ris’ 1992 film sticks in the mind long after its con­ven­tion­al­ly melo­dra­mat­ic and vio­lent finale, because its open­ing hour is so sex­u­al­ly bizarre and tonal­ly berserk. Cen­tring on the inces­tu­ous cou­pling of moth­er and son vam­pires (played sen­sa­tion­al­ly by Alice Krige and Bri­an Krause) the film fea­tures a very young Mad­chen Amick as a horny teen caught up in the machi­na­tions of this ancient evil. It’s all silli­ness of course, but the sex­u­al over­tones, bizarrely erot­ic sex scenes and mem­o­rably haunt­ing score all con­tribute to the deli­cious­ness of this glo­ri­ous­ly strange odd­i­ty. Weird­ly sad, always ridicu­lous and effec­tive­ly nasty, Sleep­walk­ers is per­haps the least remem­bered King film most wor­thy of re-appraisal, if noth­ing else because it fea­tures some of the most pow­er­ful cat act­ing com­mit­ted to film. PR

King’s prob­lem­at­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of racial minori­ties in his nov­els is inescapable and unfor­giv­able. Per­haps a small con­so­la­tion is the way that these minori­ties, always shown as scary and for­eign, are how­ev­er always right. In King’s sto­ries, their exis­tence always serves to high­light the cru­el­ty and arro­gance of the tol­er­at­ed white Amer­i­can male, and per­haps no oth­er King pro­tag­o­nist is more unsym­pa­thet­ic than the main char­ac­ter of Thin­ner. A con­tent, obese lawyer and fam­i­ly man glid­ing through life with­out any con­cerns what­so­ev­er, Bil­ly (Robert John Burke) is cursed by a trav­eller after he acci­den­tal­ly kills his daugh­ter. Bil­ly imme­di­ate­ly starts los­ing weight at incred­i­ble speed to the point of ill­ness, and, as white men have done for cen­turies, sets about exter­mi­nat­ing the fam­i­ly of the old trav­eller to force him to lift the curse. As much as there is plea­sure in see­ing the world of white men crum­ble, these char­ac­ters are almost too unpleas­ant to bear, and the bit­ter film leaves a sour after­taste. EL

As the title sug­gests, the link between the three tales of this anthol­o­gy hor­ror film is a trav­el­ling cat, a mere wit­ness to the first two sto­ries who becomes a real hero in the third. In the first short, James Woods plays a smok­er seek­ing the help of spe­cialised clin­ic ​‘Quit­ters, Inc.’ King being King, this banal sit­u­a­tion soon takes on mind-numb­ing impor­tance, ques­tion­ing the solid­i­ty of the Amer­i­can nuclear fam­i­ly itself: any mis­steps from Mor­ri­son and increas­ing­ly grue­some con­se­quences befall his wife and child. A lit­tle repet­i­tive but just as glo­ri­ous­ly sadis­tic, the sec­ond sto­ry sees an old man force his wife’s young lover to walk the slim ledge around the high build­ing where he lives. The film peaks with the last sto­ry, where the cat finds him­self in a fight to the death with an evil troll bent on slic­ing the throat of a young Drew Bar­ry­more. Fea­tur­ing glo­ri­ous­ly dat­ed spe­cial effects and some of the most impres­sive cat act­ing ever put to screen, it’s a joy­ful and serene end­ing to an oth­er­wise won­der­ful­ly dis­turbed col­lec­tion of sto­ries. EL

Spawn­ing no few­er than nine sequels, Fritz Kiersch’s 1984 adap­ta­tion is notable main­ly for its sim­plic­i­ty and straight­for­ward­ness, bely­ing the expan­sive intri­ca­cies of lore in the fran­chise that would fol­low. A brief, bloody pre­lude intro­duces us to a town in which the entire adult pop­u­la­tion has been bru­tal­ly mur­dered and a ​‘Lord of the Flies’-style com­mu­ni­ty of chil­dren rules. The kids are led by a pair of demon­ic teen boys, Isaac (an unfor­get­table John Franklin) and Malachai (Court­ney Gains), but the com­mu­ni­ty is far from sta­ble: when a bick­er­ing cou­ple arrive in town and are men­aced by the kids, things esca­late vio­lent­ly, cul­mi­nat­ing in a melo­dra­mat­ic show­down in which a demon­ic pres­ence is sum­moned and fought in the corn­fields. A suit­ably tense and unre­lent­ing chase movie, the film is mem­o­rable for an ear­ly pre-Ter­mi­na­tor turn from Lin­da Hamil­ton as well as some gen­uine­ly unnerv­ing child per­for­mances. It’s high trash nev­er­the­less. PR

King’s sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with icon­ic hor­ror direc­tor George A. Romero plays beau­ti­ful­ly with the writer’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy in its depic­tion of a pop­u­lar nov­el­ist who writes more vio­lent, sen­sa­tion­al mate­r­i­al under a pseu­do­nym. King and his alter­na­tive per­sona Richard Bach­man (respon­si­ble for schlock­i­er nov­els like The Run­ning Man) here find fic­tion­al prox­ies in the form of nov­el­ist Thad Beau­mont (Tim­o­thy Hut­ton), tor­ment­ed by his vio­lent alter ego George Stark, a leather-clad creep who begins vio­lent­ly mur­der­ing var­i­ous of the writer’s asso­ciates. A homage to gial­lo and pulp fic­tion, the film is a styl­ish exer­cise in schlock, cul­mi­nat­ing in a bril­liant­ly ludi­crous show­down, despite some par­tic­u­lar­ly ropey spe­cial effects. PR

Dri­ven by a haunt­ing cen­tral per­for­mance from Christo­pher Walken, David Cronenberg’s unnerv­ing 1985 King adap­ta­tion is a mas­ter­class in ten­sion and style which man­ages to avoid expos­ing the more far-fetched ele­ments of the nov­el. Fol­low­ing a hor­rif­ic acci­dent, John­ny Smith (Walken) finds new psy­chic abil­i­ties allow him to see into the past and future of any indi­vid­ual he comes into phys­i­cal con­tact with. The episod­ic nar­ra­tive that fol­lows, in which John­ny explores his gifts, inves­ti­gat­ing inci­dents of esca­lat­ing sig­nif­i­cance, is real­ly just a vehi­cle for Cro­nen­berg to mine his fas­ci­na­tion with bod­i­ly hor­ror, with a dead­pan approach to vio­lence that occa­sion­al­ly erupts into spec­ta­cle. Stand­out moments are a fit­ting­ly hor­ren­dous sui­cide scene and a mem­o­rable cli­max in which a cor­rupt politi­cian is exposed and shamed as a cow­ard. Ter­rif­ic edit­ing, tremen­dous­ly atmos­pher­ic cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Michael Kamen’s great score all con­tribute to mak­ing this one of the most effec­tive­ly cin­e­mat­ic King adap­ta­tions – one, fur­ther­more, in which the the­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the film­mak­er meet their match in glo­ri­ous­ly dot­ty source mate­r­i­al. PR

More of the same schtick, only dark­er, blood­i­er and more scary seems to have been the phi­los­o­phy behind this under­rat­ed sequel. With Michael Gor­nick replac­ing Romero as direc­tor, the film presents three new sto­ries writ­ten by King and drawn from the pages of the fic­tion­al Creepshow mag. The high­light is ​‘The Raft’, a grotesque­ly effec­tive alle­go­ry for teen sex and dis­ease, in which a quar­tet of horny teens find them­selves strand­ed on a lake plagued by tox­ic waste. How­ev­er, there is fun to be had in all of the sto­ries, and the film bombs along with the same ghoul­ish fun and puerile humour as the first instal­ment. A sec­ond sequel went straight to video in 2007 but has noth­ing to do with King’s writ­ing and is best avoid­ed. PR

King earned his first screen­writ­ing cred­it col­lab­o­rat­ing on this bril­liant­ly dark and fun­ny port­man­teau film from direc­tor George A Romero. An homage to pulp hor­ror mag­a­zines of the 1950s, the film con­sists of five vignettes drawn from the pages of the fic­tion­al ​‘Creepshow’ mag­a­zine. A delight­ful fram­ing device in which gar­ish­ly illus­trat­ed pan­els from the mag burst into life sets the macabre tone for this exer­cise in fun and rev­er­en­tial hor­ror. This is the rare port­man­teau film in which every seg­ment shines, with no weak­er seg­ments or longeurs. The stand­outs are the hor­ri­ble sto­ry of a spurned hus­band who plans an elab­o­rate revenge, in ​‘Some­thing To Tide You Over’, and the dark­ly com­ic sto­ry of a fam­i­ly haunt­ing in ​‘Father’s Day’. The for­mer is par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable for fea­tur­ing com­ic actors Leslie Nielsen and Ted Dan­son in dra­mat­ic roles played dead straight. Also look out for King him­self in a colour­ful cameo as a man cursed with a dis­gust­ing bod­i­ly afflic­tion. The film is a joy through­out, to be trea­sured above all the sil­li­est, most fun-ori­ent­ed of King adap­ta­tions. PR

One of the most effec­tive­ly unpleas­ant King adap­ta­tions, this 1993 offer­ing fea­tures a blis­ter­ing turn from Max Von Sydow as Leland Gaunt, the dev­il­ish pro­pri­etor of a small town antiques store who offers cus­tomers the real­i­sa­tion of their wildest dreams in return for loy­al­ty and vio­lent favours. Respon­si­ble for the total break­down of com­mu­ni­ty in the peace­ful town of Cas­tle Rock, Gaunt glee­ful­ly watch­es as res­i­dents turn against one anoth­er, chaos reigns and pet­ty dis­putes turn mur­der­ous. With lit­tle in the way of human­i­ty and a nas­ti­ly nihilis­tic streak, the film is so unre­lent­ing­ly bleak as to be at times almost unwatch­able. An effec­tive, if unen­joy­able alle­go­ry for small town Amer­i­can life, Need­ful Things is for com­pletists only. PR

The sec­ond of three cin­e­mat­ic King adap­ta­tions from Frank Darabont, The Green Mile is by far the weak­est of the director’s efforts, too often falling into bathos, trea­cly sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and over­long extrap­o­la­tion of its cen­tral con­ceit. Osten­si­bly a vignette from the life of jad­ed prison war­den Paul Edge­comb (Tom Han­ks) who bonds with mys­te­ri­ous, pos­si­bly mag­i­cal pris­on­er John Cof­fey (Michael Clarke Dun­can), the film’s ugly com­bi­na­tion of bru­tal prison real­ism and high sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty is a tough pill to swal­low, even despite the best efforts of Thomas Newman’s mag­nif­i­cent score. PR

Pushed by a pro­found desire for ​“nor­mal­cy”, King char­ac­ters often find them­selves com­mit­ting unthink­able acts which, of course, imme­di­ate­ly strip them of the sta­tus of reg­u­lar peo­ple. In 1922, this nor­mal­cy is coun­try liv­ing — what push­es farmer Wil­fred James (Thomas Jane) to mur­der is the then-new threat of mod­ern city life. He is so des­per­ate, in fact, that he will­ing­ly destroys the fam­i­ly unit usu­al­ly so dear to King, and kills his wife after she threat­ens to sell their farm. Zak Hilditch’s adap­ta­tion suc­cess­ful­ly trans­lates King’s abil­i­ty to bridge the com­fort­ing and mun­dane with the ter­ri­fy­ing and unusu­al: every moment of vio­lence and gore is more hor­ri­ble and dis­gust­ing than the pic­turesque milieu would lead us to expect. Though the hor­rors that fol­low Wilfred’s deed aren’t super­nat­ur­al, the atmos­pher­ic film fills us with the sense of doom that he comes to feel hang­ing over him at all times. A more bois­ter­ous treat­ment of the source mate­r­i­al could have made for a more enter­tain­ing, sil­li­er film, but this is one of the rare King adap­ta­tions where a seri­ous, real­is­tic approach actu­al­ly bears fruit. EL

Recent­ly adapt­ed into a tele­vi­sion series, King’s 1980 novel­la first appeared on screen as the third King film from direc­tor Frank Darabont. After the more sen­ti­men­tal, real­is­tic aes­thet­ic of The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion and The Green Mile, this B‑movie-inspired schlock­fest echoes Romero’s Dawn of the Dead in its depic­tion of bick­er­ing towns­peo­ple holed up in a mall and await­ing death at the hands of some par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty mist-dwelling crea­tures. Orig­i­nal­ly envis­aged as a black & white film, the movie exists in both a colour and mar­gin­al­ly prefer­able mono­chrome ver­sion. It’s all about the pay-off though, end­ing as it does on a note of unusu­al­ly bleak and unex­pect­ed despair and irony. PR

With his unpar­al­leled abil­i­ty to remain endear­ing while express­ing total dis­dain for every­one around him, it’s no won­der that John Cusack has so far starred in three King adap­ta­tions, Stand by Me, 1408 and The Cell in 2016. The sec­ond one may not be the best known, but it might well be the most fun. As Mike Enslin, yet anoth­er one of King’s onscreen writ­ers but one who refus­es to believe in the super­nat­ur­al, Cusack brings his usu­al arro­gance to room 1408, sup­pos­ed­ly the site of strange deaths. Through some dodgy CGI and relent­less edit­ing, the room changes shape, and so do time itself and Mike’s own con­scious­ness. The bleak and con­fus­ing nar­ra­tive vague­ly touch­es on issues of grief for emo­tion­al impact, but it’s the sil­ly play­ful­ness of the film and Cusack’s ded­i­ca­tion to it that make 1408 work on its own lim­it­ed terms. ML

At the begin­ning of Gerald’s Game, Jessie (Car­la Gug­i­no) is hand­cuffed to the bed frame, to her sur­prise, by her hus­band Ger­ald (Bruce Green­wood). When she protests, he threat­ens to go through with his vio­lent fan­ta­sy whether she likes it or not before pro­ceed­ing to drop dead of a heart-attack. This leaves Jessie in a humil­i­at­ing posi­tion, yet King can­not be eas­i­ly dis­missed as a writer who takes plea­sure in his char­ac­ters’ suf­fer­ing. Rather, his work helps us stare into the dark­est parts of human nature, with laugh­ter or with tears. Immo­bilised, Jessie is sim­i­lar­ly forced to con­front her fears from a posi­tion of sta­sis – unlike most of King’s char­ac­ters, who tend to flee their prob­lems and end up dead, or worse. What fol­lows is a mov­ing and thrilling explo­ration of trau­ma, and ulti­mate­ly, resilience. As in the best adap­ta­tions of King, explo­sions of gore echo the rot of unchecked emo­tions just sim­mer­ing under the sur­face of those lives; one par­tic­u­lar­ly unnerv­ing scene feels like a cathar­tic exor­cism. EL

An extreme­ly faith­ful adap­ta­tion of King’s 1983 nov­el, Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary shares some­thing of the spir­it of The Dead Zone in that its soul­ful, straight-faced deliv­ery of some ridicu­lous mate­r­i­al pays off with a gen­uine sense of hor­ror and sad­ness. Telling the sto­ry of a young doc­tor dri­ven to extreme mea­sures when he los­es his child in a hor­rif­ic road acci­dent, the film focus­es on a super­nat­ur­al grave­yard which allows any crea­ture, ani­mal or human to return from death in zom­bie-like form. A prop­er­ly scary film with some ter­rif­ic per­for­mances, it is one of the very best King films, cul­mi­nat­ing in an inap­pro­pri­ate but catchy title song by The Ramones. An extreme­ly bloody and tonal­ly quite dif­fer­ent sequel fol­lowed in 1992, also direct­ed by Lam­bert. Hav­ing lit­tle to do with King’s writ­ing, it is nev­er­the­less an effec­tive­ly nasty slice of body hor­ror, fea­tur­ing a superb turn from a young Edward Fur­long, and worth seek­ing out. PR

The movies real­ly love King, so much so that one of his sto­ries has been turned into the best movie ever made (accord­ing to IMDb users). The epic scale (sev­er­al decades) as well as the ulti­mate­ly uplift­ing mes­sage of Rita Hay­worth and the Shaw­shank Redemp­tion meant that the novel­la was per­fect­ly suit­ed to a ​’90s Oscar-wor­thy Hol­ly­wood dra­ma. Its hero, Andy Dufresne, was also a ter­rif­ic part for Tim Rob­bins, whose sub­tle­ty and con­ven­tion­al yet dis­qui­et­ing face and fig­ure gave the qui­et edu­cat­ed man the cap­ti­vat­ing air of mys­tery he need­ed to car­ry this long sto­ry. Although devoid of super­nat­ur­al or hor­ror ele­ments, the nar­ra­tive is unmis­tak­ably King-esque in its con­cern with hope and its dis­con­tents, and its dynam­ic of good peo­ple vs bad peo­ple. Andy’s love of books and num­bers make him a clear sur­ro­gate for King. As qui­et­ly as the author sets his plot in motion to then blow his reader’s mind away, Andy pre­pares his escape from prison metic­u­lous­ly and dis­creet­ly, using intel­li­gence and patience to final­ly sur­prise his cap­tors and free him­self from their grasp. ML

Five years after play­ing an actu­al mani­ac in Mis­ery, Kathy Bates returns in a much more ambigu­ous and real­is­tic role as Dolores, a maid accused of bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing her rich boss. On this occa­sion, she reunites with her daugh­ter Sele­na (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), a suc­cess­ful jour­nal­ist suf­fer­ing from depres­sion and who hasn’t spo­ken to her moth­er in years, believ­ing she is respon­si­ble for her father’s death. As Dolores tries to clear her name, a much more mun­dane and depress­ing­ly banal sto­ry of abuse emerges, much to the anger of Sele­na who would rather nev­er hear the hor­ri­ble truth. A poignant sto­ry of women help­ing each oth­er in a world that does every­thing to turn them against one anoth­er, Dolores Clai­borne is King’s defin­i­tive fem­i­nist text in a body of work that has always crit­i­cised the pro­found misog­y­ny of Amer­i­can soci­ety. Hackford’s adap­ta­tion treats the inner lives of these women with heart­break­ing sin­cer­i­ty and over­whelm­ing inten­si­ty: the shots of a dis­tressed Dolores under a total solar eclipse can nev­er be for­got­ten. EL

Mis­ery is one of the few King adap­ta­tions which takes the time to ful­ly restore to the char­ac­ters’ emo­tions the aggran­dised scale they have in King’s nov­els. Indeed, King often holds the emo­tion­al real­i­ty of his char­ac­ters in obses­sive, claus­tro­pho­bic close-ups, high­light­ing their obses­sions and poten­tial for mad­ness even as they might seem per­fect­ly qui­et on the out­side. In Mis­ery, James Caan plays Paul Shel­don, a nov­el­ist who – like King – has made a career of writ­ing about obses­sive and emo­tion­al char­ac­ters, but here with­in cheap romance nov­els. When he is tak­en pris­on­er in the house of super­fan Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, who won a well-deserved Oscar for her per­for­mance), he is in a way get­ting his due for manip­u­lat­ing the emo­tions of his read­ers for years: he has cre­at­ed a mon­ster. The irony and humour of the sit­u­a­tion is not lost nei­ther on him nor on direc­tor Rob Rein­er, and Mis­ery is one of the fun­ni­est and most enter­tain­ing King adap­ta­tions there is. EL

One of King’s trade­mark qual­i­ties is how he writes teenage char­ac­ters with chill­ing real­ism, nev­er sug­ar­coat­ing the pain and cru­el­ty they face when grow­ing up. Arnie (Kei­th Gor­don) is a nerdy teenag­er bul­lied at school, but his plight doesn’t make him an angel: in Chris­tine, every­one is bad. This tox­ic atmos­phere, ren­dered with bleak sharp­ness by Car­pen­ter, makes the sud­den intru­sion of the super­nat­ur­al not jar­ring, but instead per­fect­ly com­pat­i­ble with Arnie’s anger: his bul­lies and Chris­tine, the mys­te­ri­ous ​‘liv­ing’ car he finds to accom­plish his revenge, are both equal­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. Hav­ing such a mas­ter of film style as Car­pen­ter to direct not only a King adap­ta­tion, but this sto­ry in par­tic­u­lar, is one of the great­est things to have hap­pened to Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. Carpenter’s film­mak­ing at once com­pels the audi­ence to feel Arnie’s fas­ci­na­tion for Christine’s beau­ty, and to be ter­ri­fied by it. His cam­era turns the vehi­cle into a tru­ly erot­ic being that com­mu­ni­cates with its own­er only with its move­ments, like an ide­alised silent woman. Even when the car gets him the respect and pop­u­lar­i­ty he had always craved, how­ev­er, Arnie remains the same ter­ri­fied boy strug­gling with his iden­ti­ty. Per­haps it is the car, as sym­bol of teenage sex­u­al anx­i­ety, that owns Arnie, and not the oth­er way around. ML

As with The Shin­ing, Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me is dif­fi­cult to appraise afresh because its iconog­ra­phy, per­for­mances and mood are so ingrained in pop­u­lar cul­ture and have been so influ­en­tial on Amer­i­can com­ing of age cin­e­ma. The film’s imagery car­ries with it a qua­si-myth­ic weight, ren­der­ing it dif­fi­cult to approach on its own terms. Watch any US movie about kids grow­ing up and learn­ing about the world, and the film is bound to be echoed in some way. Most oth­er film­mak­ers can only hope to cap­ture its aching­ly real­is­tic evo­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ty between young boys, lush cin­e­matog­ra­phy, exquis­ite feel for land­scape and per­fect­ly melan­cholic score and use of pop songs. As it is, the film per­fect­ly cap­tures a mood of melan­cho­lia and sad­ness about lost youth. It is one of the great­est Amer­i­can films, let alone the best King adap­ta­tions. PR

Stephen King dis­liked Stan­ley Kubrick’s adap­ta­tion of his 1977 nov­el to such an extent that he over­saw a length­i­er and far more exhaus­tive TV adap­ta­tion in 1997, a five-hour ordeal which sad­ly main­tains none of Kubrick’s pow­er to shock. Kubrick’s sur­re­al imagery, elab­o­rate Steadicam shots and bor­der­line psy­chot­ic per­for­mances are gone, replaced by a more rigid­ly faith­ful adher­ence to the super­nat­ur­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tions and wack­i­er inter­ludes of the nov­el. Part of King’s objec­tions to Kubrick’s film stem from Jack Nicholson’s unnerv­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing per­for­mance through­out. From the open­ing moments it is clear that hotel care­tak­er Jack Tor­rance is a sick man. The tense plea­sure of the film lies in wait­ing for him to explode into violence.

In King’s nov­el, the Over­look hotel has a malev­o­lent qual­i­ty entire­ly its own: it’s a man­i­fes­ta­tion of temp­ta­tion and men­tal tor­ture that push­es Jack and his fam­i­ly towards insan­i­ty. For Kubrick how­ev­er, the cav­ernous inte­ri­ors and red cor­ri­dors of the Over­look appear more as an exten­sion of char­ac­ter, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Jack’s bro­ken psy­che. Decent men torn apart by tragedy or super­nat­ur­al temp­ta­tion are a recur­ring motif in King’s work, so to be pre­sent­ed with a pro­tag­o­nist already bro­ken inter­nal­ly feels strange. Of course Kubrick’s film deserves its rep­u­ta­tion as one of the finest exer­cis­es in dread com­mit­ted to screen. But in the con­text of form­ing a canon of King adap­ta­tions it sure­ly falls short of King’s vision, being in the end entire­ly its own beast. PR

It seems inevitable that De Pal­ma and King would work togeth­er. While King the writer tends to express overblown anx­i­eties about more or less mun­dane prob­lems through grotesque­ly exag­ger­at­ed sto­ries, DePal­ma the direc­tor employs cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage to evoke the vis­cer­al inten­si­ty of such fears, how­ev­er absurd they may seem.

When adapt­ing Car­rie, De Pal­ma under­stood that King’s far fetched sto­ry of peri­ods para­noia need­ed to be trans­lat­ed into sim­ple yet strik­ing images of pure hor­ror in order to bypass ridicule. Using visu­al style, per­for­mance, edit­ing, and a gor­geous sound­track by reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Pino Don­ag­gio, De Pal­ma man­aged to intro­duce Carrie’s untamed mag­i­cal pow­ers into the tacky, often amus­ing but cru­el world of high school rival­ries, with shock­ing vigour. Carrie’s out­burst is made not only ter­ri­fy­ing, but also heart­break­ing by the fact that the direc­tor let his audi­ence get attached to her suf­fer­ing at the hands of her class­mates, her moth­er, and her puber­ty, before unleash­ing her revenge in a word­less sequence of unfor­get­table blood­shed. ML