MovieChat Forums > Misery (1990) Discussion > Did you sympathize with Annie?

Did you sympathize with Annie?

posted 12 years ago by capkronos
24 replies | jump to latest

I was watching this with a couple of friends last night and was shocked when they said they felt sorry for Annie when Paul was beating the s--t out of her at the end. I was like "Whaaa?"

There's a scene early on where Annie talks about her husband leaving her, says that the Misery character seems almost like a friend and how the books brought her so much joy over the years because she was lonely in real life. OK, I get that that generates some sympathy for her early on. However, all that's before we see the extent of her psychosis and learn how many people, including babies, she has murdered over the years. By the end I was wanting to see the crazy bitch dead!

My horror movie blog:
http://thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com/

[–] mjd_subs2 9 years ago

It's been a long time since you posted so I'm late to the discussion. I don't really see why we, the viewers, can't feel BOTH sympathy and disgust for her. People are very complex and nobody gets to the point of sheer madness she portrayed without some type of personal traumas in their own history. It's not as cut and dried as "all bad" or "all good" so it doesn't have to make our reactions/empathy mutually exclusive. It would be nice and neat if it was, but it's not. That's why lawyers spend so much time on jury selection. They know that people don't just listen to the facts of a case. A plaintiff's or defendant's age, race, gender, size, occupation, style of dress and all other kinds of factors go "into" how their case is interpreted.

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"Get busy living, or get busy dying." (Andy - The Shawshank Redemption)

[–] IMDB_Vits 9 years ago

No- I did feel sorry for her when she said to PAUL "You'll never know what it's like for someone like me to lose someone like you"... until she pulled out the gun and I remembered how evil she was. Kathy's performance was good enough to make me forget for that short period.

[–] jasonblack_123 8 years ago

An (implied) baby killer? Of course I don't sympathise with her, mental illness or not

Every man dies...not every man really lives...

[–] InherentlyYours 8 years ago

no. I felt sympathy for the pained actors in MANIAC and NIGHTMARE

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081114/?ref_=nv_sr_5
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082818/?ref_=fn_al_tt_8

[–] AmyJolamb 8 years ago

Tough question. I feel empathy for others. I think we are all suppose to feel empathy. When someone is a psychopath it is a mental illness and I feel sorry for them. But, psychopaths do choices of doing right or wrong just like others. Most psychopaths cover and hide crimes showing they know they did wrong. So I feel no empathy for that. You choose wrong then you pay for it.

[–] sjbradford 8 years ago

One of the more effective passages of the book is when Paul feels some sympathy for her, because he says that every once in a while, he sees the person she would have been if she weren't so mentally broken. He says that those flashes of humanity in some ways made the ordeal even more difficult for him because he couldn't bring himself to completely hate her. Or something like that.

[–] Pantstrovich 8 years ago

After having experienced real people like her, hell no.

In reality, anything seemingly nice they do is only for their own gain. Everything's an act. They're hardly human. They should all be beaten to death with metal pigs.

:)