Very disappointing .. if you read the book

Not really, I loved both the book and the movie. Realistically, Directors have aa tough time turning a great book into a great movie. Things are going to be left out, put in and this movie's case reworked.

I loved the book, but I found a lot of the violence overly gruesome (when he got histhumbs cut off especially seemed like violence for the sake of violence to me) for no other reason outside of ''Annie is crazy''
Kathy Bates and the screenplay allow Annie to be a more belivable and intelligent woman. She seems naive but really is cut throat and sneaky.

There are scenes i would've liked to have seen as well, but for what the film is, I have to say it's pretty fantastic in it's own right. The Director got the perfect balance of the book and his own style.

I read the book but I still find the movie great and effective.


"It's Minnie Pearl's murder weapon."

Books are rubbish, the film is much better by default.

I love how when people complain that films are a let down to the novel. Books obviously contain more detail, how is a film supposed to mirror that?

This film is great.

I can see your criticisms, having just reread the book and rewatched the movie myself.

On the other hand, it's hard to adapt a novel like Misery to the cinema in an accurate way. The horror in Misery is mostly psychological. It's the thoughts and feelings of Paul Sheldon that make the book so gruesome.

So what can you do, if you're making a movie based on such books? Well, first thing you need to do, is rewrite the story in such a way that the psychological horror becomes visible. By creating physical horror, suspense, and good dialogue. Rob Reiner actually did that rather well.

Personally, I think the movie has a couple of flaws. It moves too fast for one thing. Paul Sheldon just wrote a book that meant so much to him that he comments to his editor "When I've finished this one, I might just have something to put on my gravestone". And then he burns it after just two, not even particularly violent, outbursts by Annie Wilkes, and two minutes of "friendly" discussion while being sprayed with kerosene? That could have been made more believable. In the book it gets spun out over the course of a couple of weeks, and by the time he does burn his book, she has already shown much darker sides of herself.

I think the movie could have done with just a little bit more build-up. Not a lot, maybe one or two more scenes, showing more of Annie Wilkes' worryingly erratic behaviour, and Pauls excruciating pain, could have done the job, considering the capabilities of the actors.

All thing's considered, the movie does convey a lot of the book's suspense, especially in the second half, when we get to see a bit more of the Annie we get to know so well in the book. And Kathy Bates is possibly my favourite female baddie in a movie ever. Also, the side-show of the Sherrif and his wife works great in the movie, to give it a little bit more grounding in the real world.

I salute Rob Reiner for making the movie his own, instead of just trying to be an accurate depiction of the book. I doubt it could have been made better by sticking closer to Stephen King's vision. It's imperfect, but maybe that encourages a few more people to actually read the book, and see what they're missing.

Nope - the film is better than the book - just like The Shining. Pet Sematary is the other way around.

I haven't read the book, but what Paul went through in the film was quite enough to make this a genuinely tense horror movie. Cutting off his feet and thumbs? Sounds like it would basically make this film into torture porn, and I think Quentin Tarantino caters for that market quite adequately already.

Gore just makes things comical. Look at Kill Bill. You can't take the violence in that movie seriously.

Agreed. I was floored at how Hollywood destroyed "Flowers in the Attic" and make a point of not watching movies based on books I've already read. Or, I will put many years between watching a movie and reading the book it's based on so I avoid that unconsicous comparison.

In my experience, a movie, no matter how well done, can't compete with the detail and characterization of a well-written book. The beauty of the written word leaves it to the reader's imagination to "see" the story play out perfectly in our minds whereas the big screen makes those definitions for us and simply can't bring the story to life the way everyone pictures it in their mind. That's why we see these constant debates on this site (and others) about various movies.

At the end of the day, I'm an avid reader and I love being engrossed in a story. I never imagine it being made into a movie (and don't usually care if it is). I enjoy movies too and appreciate when they are well done, but that seems to happen less and less in recent years.