In a long, distinguished career of giving the world nightmares, few of Stephen King's creations are as horrifying and memorable as Annie Wilkes. Novelist Paul Sheldon didn't know how doomed he was when he woke up inside Wilkes' cabin after surviving a terrible car crash. Every celebrity fears having to hang out with their "number one fan." Why? Because it doesn't seem...natural...for people to devote their lives so intensely to people they don't really know. Annie Wilkes is the summation of all these fears: a bipolar, psychopathic fan with a history of death, murder, and mayhem masked behind a sweet, smiling veneer. The scene where Annie "hobbles" Sheldon is rightfully regarded as one of the most terrifying moments in horror history. The scene's effectiveness is more evidence for my "less is more" theory of cinematic pain. Here's my theory: if you want to make the audience physically uncomfortable via violence, less is more. In the original novel, Annie cuts Paul's legs off. Certainly that is more painful to Paul than the movie's hobbling operation. But an audience will respond more to seeing Paul's feet getting smashed because they have no frame of reference for losing a leg. Everyone has twisted, sprained, broken, or injured their feet before. But few have actually lost limbs. It reminds me of the scene in Luis Puenzo's The Official Story (1985) where one of the character's fingers are smashed in a door hinge. It comes out of nowhere, is almost instantly over, and isn't sensationalized. And yet I still literally consider that to be the most violent thing I've ever seen on film. Remember: less is more. And director Rob Reiner gives us just enough horror and pain in Misery without crossing the line.
8/10
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