A Personal Response to Misery



Misery was a film adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. It was released in theatres in 1990 and was directed by Rob Reiner. The film follows the character Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan), a writer who finds himself saved by his biggest fan (a character name Annie Wilkes who is played by Kathy Bates). Over the course of the film, it is slowly revealed that Annie is not the saviour she appears to be and a psychological thriller ensues.

For me, the film Misery was disappointing. The main reasons I found it to be disappointing (which I shall be discussing) were its handling of tension, its over use of tropes and its (in my opinion) poor ending.

There were several aspects of the film which could’ve been expanded upon to create greater depth - such as the pig named Misery, which could’ve been utilised more as a metaphor for the Misery books and Paul Sheldon’s relationship to them, Annie Wilkes relationship to the character Misery, or the emotion of misery itself. But no, instead the pig seems to be used only to tell the audience that Annie Welks is childish and lives on the farm, a fact that can already be inferred by watching the previous scenes.

The inherent weakness and vulnerability of sleep and from being drugged could have been utilised a lot more, especially since a lot of scenes with Paul Sheldon begin with him waking up. I feel there would have been more psychological horror for the audience to experience if sleep itself was an element of the horror – which brings me to my next point.

I personally only felt tension in two scenes of the film. This is not a good thing for me. The film could have manipulated the information the audience was giving to lull them into a false sense of security and then shock them later but no; watching the film as a whole, I noticed that when the characters were expressing signs of tension, I was not tense – if I was, I was certainly not feeling as much tension as they were intending for me to and this disappointed me.

Also, a lot more could have been done surrounding the burning of manuscripts. Instead of being a representation of letting go or a representation of loss in general, the burning of manuscripts is shown just to let the audience know that Annie is a bad person and that she likes the Misery books – even this is a plot point that is supposed to link the beginning to the end. Again, this is a fact that can be inferred by watching the rest of the film.

When Paul Sheldon’s manuscripts are originally burnt, Annie Wilkes burns them over a barbeque; the fact a barbeque was used led me to believe she was going to feed the book to Paul and I was mistaken. This would’ve made the film more horrific and work much better in my opinion as I feel that the threat of Annie Wilkes wasn’t established well, that is until she randomly pulls out a gigantic weapon seemingly out of nowhere to brutalise someone. Even when brutalising someone, there is not enough time given for the audience to really feel the tension or debilitation of it: Paul keeps on writing as he once did and even gets a comedic middle finger out of his hobbling, and the sheriff gets hidden away without any reaction of his wife and friends he left behind.

The death of the Sheriff marks the beginning of a rushed and poor ending to the film. This point suddenly changes character motives to try to tie the plot into a neat bow. For example, Annie Welks – seemingly built up to be either a usurper of Paul Sheldon or lover of his writing – suddenly wishes to kill both her and Paul which is not at all what the film felt like it was leading to for me.

During the final fight, several tropes of horror are used. The main one used is the ‘not quite dead’ villain trope. Although the pacing of the ending is too quick for these tropes to really bear any weight on the plot, just like the rest of the ending... WHOOPS DID I JUST SAY THAT OUTLOUD?!

 But seriously, the ending was rushed and this normally stops there from being any emotional weight put on the audience until the final scene, so I’m glad they really put in a good emotionally impactful ending... wait what? No they didn’t. I hated the ending to this film – I can’t say otherwise. For one it’s comedic so doesn’t reflect the tone of the film and since when did movies actually become good from having silly one liners put in the end of films, especially in a supposed horror film? It just seemed tonally jarring and really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Also, I feel like the idea of this film being an interesting gender role reversal in cinema is wrong. Looking at it deeply with gender-vision turned on, you can see it is a film about a woman trying to become more powerful than a man and no matter how hard she tries, she is still overcome (and also murdered) by a man. Although she did kill that old man on screen, but then again gender-vision will show you that he obviously (heavy sarcasm is heavy) deserved it because he wasn’t sexually satisfying his wife enough.

To avoid being over critical I’d like to discuss what the filmmakers did excellently – setting up and its use of detail. Every shot and every line of dialogue could be seen as set up for what was to come; my issue is just that the pay off from the majority of this was unfulfilling. The filmmakers also used visual cues to tell the audience key parts of the story without using the ever frustrating exposition Hollywood seems to love recently. The actors also gave magnificent performances, often not having to speak to convey emotions and responses to actions.

 To say a film is disappointing, to me, does not make it bad film. In fact, I think misery is actually a very good film; it just left me wanting more. Whether it being overhyped by fans of the film or just my own experience with cinema and storytelling, I felt that a lot more could have been done with the film.