Macabre...ish Horror Review: Misery

Misery, 1990/ 107 min.

After putting to a close his successful romance series featuring Misery Chastain, famed author, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), is ready to embark on something new and more serious. While traveling to New York, he drives off the road in a blizzard and is found and rescued by a nurse named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), his biggest fan.

He wakes up in her remote home with a dislocated shoulder and broken legs. He’s so grateful for her help that he agrees to let her read his newest manuscript. Devastated by her favorite character and story ending, she loses the rest of her mind. Annie is crazy. She informs Sheldon that no one knows where he is and she has an insane plan to keep him indefinitely.

She is also going to make him rewrite the book and in the interim, he does everything he can to find a way to escape. While she’s out, one day, he finds out just how crazy she is when he escapes his room.

Escape seems impossible. She always seems to be one step ahead. And when she starts killing off people who come searching for him. He may never escape.

But once he finally finished the story and invited her to celebrate by sharing in his tradition of having expensive champagne and one cigarette. Which by the way, she already knows because she’s a stalker.

She realizes too late that it’s a trap that will involve him jamming that manuscript down her throat and her face connecting with that ancient typewriter.

This movie is riveting and at times brutal. Kathy Bated plays insane very well.