Retrospective Film Review

Misery (1990) • 30 Years Later

After a famous author is rescued from a car crash by a fan of his novels, he comes to realise her care is only the beginning of a nightmare.

The best Stephen King adaptations are usually the simpler ones; those based on a single strong idea rather than a multi-stranded plot (i.e. Carrie or Stand By Me, not It or The Dead Zone). Misery by director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman is among the most successful of them al, thanks to the clarity of its central concept: an injured writer is trapped in a remote house with a crazy woman who believes in his fictional characters a bit too much. It could almost be an elevator pitch.

But, of course, such a stripped-back plot puts an extra burden on the actors. If we don’t believe in them, the whole thing fails because there are no narrative bells and whistles to distract us. And there aren’t many big surprises in Misery, although there are plenty of small ones. This scarcely matters, however, given the power of the central performances by Kathy Bates and James Caan; the latter in a less…