Editorials
‘Misery’ at 30: The Destructive Co-Dependency Between an Author and His Number One Fan
Misery ranks high among the upper echelon of Stephen King adaptations. It holds a firm spot among the top-grossing King films, captured the hearts of critics and audiences alike, and boasts a powerhouse, Oscar-winning performance by Kathy Bates as psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes. Wilkes’ iconic and chilling portrayal marked Bates’ breakout role, a virtual unknown before getting recommended to play the part by screenwriter William Goldman (Magic). Released in theaters on November 30, 1990, Misery managed to hold a respectable place at the box office, taking second place to holiday season juggernaut Home Alone. Thirty years later, Misery remains a top tier King adaptation and has been credited as a prescient dissection of modern toxic fans. However, its journey from book to screen proves a far more layered and timeless relationship with fandom.
The idea behind the novel came to King in a dream on a flight to England. It was intended to be a short story or novella, but its characters became too big to be contained, and a full-blown novel ensued. Like many King stories, Misery was a personal one. The author’s attempt to branch out of horror with the high fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon was met with contempt and backlash from fans. He was deep in the throes of alcohol and cocaine addiction and no stranger to bizarre fan behavior at this stage in his career. Then, while writing Misery with the intent to release it under the pen name Richard Bachman, a book store clerk noticed similarities between Bachman’s work and King’s, did some sleuthing, and eventually exposed King’s shadow writer identity.
The book’s title is a double entendre; Misery refers to the heroine of protagonist Paul Sheldon’s most successful book series and his state of being throughout the story. More acutely, it’s King’s state of being during its writing. At the beginning of the book, in a drug-induced fog, Paul wakes to the unnerving sight of Annie Wilkes. She’s rescued him from a car wreck caused by Paul’s drunken state of mind. Still, instead of getting him proper help, she holds him captive and proceeds to inflict psychological, emotional, and physical torture throughout the book’s pages. There’s no pretense of Annie’s psychosis here, and she acts as both the drug that feeds his addiction and the tumultuous relationship between editor and writer. On a broader scale, Annie – Paul’s number one fan- acts as a stand-in for toxic fans that demand far too much from their idols. As such, Paul may hate Annie, but he needs her to survive, both literally and figuratively.
Because Misery hit very close to home for King and that other adaptations of his work failed miserably, he became too conservative when granting rights. Misery wasn’t for sale, not until Rob Reiner put in a request. Having been pleased by Reiner’s Stand by Me, based on another profoundly personal story, King granted Castle Rock Entertainment rights on the sole condition that Reiner produce or direct.
Reiner tapped Goldman to pen the screenplay and initially intended to hand the directorial reigns over to George Roy Hill and Barry Levinson. When they backed out, Reiner decided to direct it himself and set about studying every Alfred Hitchcock and thriller movie he could get his hands on to develop the visual language.
Bringing King’s novel to life on the big screen meant changes to the story. The film removes Annie’s duality as symbolism, dropping the drug addiction component entirely to focus on the relationship between a flawed author and his intensely toxic fans. In the novel, Annie intentionally gets Paul addicted to fictional painkiller Novril, ensuring that he’s dependent upon her. In the film, Paul (James Caan) tucks his doses of Novril in his mattress to stockpile for an escape attempt.
The adaptation speeds up the ticking clock to layer in immense suspense by introducing local sheriff Buster (Richard Farnsworth) almost straightaway when Paul’s agent (Lauren Bacall) realizes he’s missing very soon after his crash. Conversely, this version of Annie isn’t nearly as vicious up front; the longer it takes for Paul to be found, the more Annie’s pleasant veneer cracks to expose her deranged, murderous side. That slow-coiling escalation, combined with Reiner’s employment of wide angles and Dutch tilts, demonstrated that the director’s in-depth study of thrillers paid dividends in mounting tension.
Played to perfection, Bates imbues Annie with far more sympathy than ever afforded the character in the novel. Her plucky simpleton and eager-to-please persona masking terrible darkness glimpsed in her violent rage every time Paul steps on a hidden landmine of her short temper. To offset her sympathetic nature, the film makes the scrapbook reveal of her serial killing ways far more nefarious- instead of giving an overview of her lifelong serial killing ways, the movie cuts right to the chase of her maternity ward baby-killing spree for brevity’s sake. It’s the lowest of lows when it comes to taboo breaking monstrosities, making it an easy choice for Reiner to convey Annie’s darkness all within the span of a single newspaper clipping.
In perhaps the most glaring departure from the novel, Reiner infuses hope. Instead of losing a limb via ax, Reiner switched it out for the infamous hobbling scene by a sledgehammer. He wanted his protagonist to make it out whole and undefeated. That’s also why Paul manages to successfully publish his first novel outside of his Misery series in the end, instead of publishing Misery Returns once he’s finally free from Annie’s clutches- the novel’s coda for Paul. The movie’s author succeeds in breaking free from fandom’s-imposed limitations, where the novel’s author finds renewed interest in his famous book series after finding more comfortable footing- pun intended- with his relationship toward the fans that fuel his career.
Whereas the central, antagonistic relationship between Paul and Annie in King’s source material offers layers of meaning, Reiner cuts straight to the chase with a thrilling examination of the co-dependency between fans and creators. The director hit it out of the park, and King has often cited Misery to be among his favorite film adaptations of his work.
In the social media age, where fan access to creators is easier than ever before, it’s easy to refer back to Misery as a predictive commentary on where fandom was headed. The truth is that fans had always taken ownership of their most beloved stories, well before King came along. The novel is as much about the author’s lack of control, thanks to addiction, as it is about his very personal experiences with fandom. Even when the book was published in 1987, he faced a backlash from fans over its vicious takedown of fandom’s darkest impulses. Never mind that Paul Sheldon was no prize himself, or that he needed Annie just as much.
Reiner honed in on that co-dependency and crafted a gripping, award-winning thriller around it. Where there’s an ugliness to both characters from the novel’s beginning, the film treats them with humanity and empathy. There’s a timelessness to the central theme. It’s bolstered by the thought and care put into every facet of the adaptation. From the writing to Reiner’s direction and smart changes to the casting choices that introduced the world to Kathy Bates, Misery firmly holds its own as one of the best King adaptations. As the mutual need between fans and storytellers only speeds up and grows louder in the digital age, Misery holds just as much relevancy now as it did thirty years ago. Perhaps even more.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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