Ya know how there’s a drawback to every career choice, no job is completely great and wonderful. I know being famous ain’t all it’s cracked up to be but this made me not want to be a writer, director, or any kind of artist. Misery is the rare kind of story that believably real and so much more terrifying because of it. Much like Pet Sematary, which I covered earlier, both movie and book are great but this time I can say I prefer the book, though the movie is still an amazing adaptation.
Paul Sheldon is a famous author of a series of books named after the main character Misery, which he has gotten fed up with over the years. He has a tradition to go to a cabin he has in the mountains when he’s about to finish a book. He finishes the last book in Misery’s series to his relief. On his way back down to go to his publishers, he gets caught in a storm storm and crashes his car. His car totaled, his body unconscious and wrecked, it looks bad for the author. But he is saved by a large, heavy woman named Annie Wilkes that brings him home and nurses him back to health. Annie loves the Misery books with all her heart. Looking through his bag, she finds Paul’s manuscript for a new Misery; Paul lets her read it, after all she did save his grumpy ass and nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Annie is full of girlish glee…until she reads the ending. She snaps, screaming at Paul, slamming him and his bed up and down in a violent rage. She forces him to burn the new book he has been working on and begin a new book to revive Misery, dedicated to her of course. Paul is in living hell, immobile, isolated from a world that thinks he’s dead except for a sheriff in the mountain town. But can Paul hold out until then while Annie grows more intensely mad and her true colors reveal themselves…
A main difference I get between the book and movie is that the two main characters are much more flushed out. In the book we learn a lot about Paul as he struggles to finish the book he never wanted to make and how by the end he almost loves the series again because of how much it challenged him. Annie’s portrayal either way amazingly lifelike but there were touches in the book that strangely made me relate her to Blaine the Mono from the third Dark Tower book. The movie does an amazing job with the acting, especially Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, and never ceases to loose tension in it’s confined space. I highly recommend it if you enjoy good old fashion suspense over gore and body counts, though who can forget the hobbling?
The horror in this novel is purely psychological and King really showcases his ability at building tension. I like that it isn’t overly gory so that when violence does happen, it is all the more effective in its suddenness and power. Great review!
Thank you!
I saw this movie a while back, never read the book. The movie freaked me out to the point that the ONLY part I remember clearly is when she shatters his ankles. NEVER AGAIN !!