Which Stephen King adaptations, if any, have been underrated?

The Shawshank Redemption is pretty good.

There are quite a few Sephen King adaptations I haven't seen yet. Underrated? Perhaps Misery. I really like this movie. Perhaps it isn't that much talked about because there is no (trashy) horror and no sci-fi in it. A great and wonderfully acted psychological cat and mouse game, I love those (like, for example, the original 1972 Sleuth).

Dolores Claiborne and 1408 are underrated, or at least under-appreciated Stephen King-based movies.

I'd say Apt Pupil tends to be overlooked.

For which ones are good, I'd say Carrie, The Dead Zone, Misery and The Shining all rank high,

I always thought Sleepwalkers and Maximum overdrive were kinda underrated myself. Was never a huge fan of Shining though.

I'm going to pimp The Dead Zone here. Jeff mentioned it already, and you all really should see it. Made by a fairly-early-in-his-career Cronenberg, it's a perfect little thriller that clocks in at about 100 minutes but manages to leave quite an impression. Also, unlike many of the other King adaptations, it doesn't feel like the cut down portion of a bigger whole.

On the other side of the spectrum is the pile of maudlin shit called Stand By Me, whose cult I have never understood. I guess it's just that general pre-1963 nostalgia which was drilled into everyone from pretty much 1964 onward.

Isn't Sleepwalkers a Dean Koontz adaptation?

No, Sleepwalkers was actually written by King.

So it is....somehow I was probably thinking of Watchers.

Just watched Misery today. It is indeed excellent.

Umm, I don't know who you talked to but pretty much everyone I know has seen or knows of Misery, and its widely regarded as one of the best King adaptations.

O.K. well I was under the impression that it was somehow underrated. Guess I was wrong. So make that "good adaptation" instead of "underrated".

I don't think it is a popular choice in these parts but i'm a big fan of The Mist even more-so when screened in Darabont's preferred B&W presentation.

Dreamcatchers....

just kidding...that movie was dog shit.

I actually thought that film was pretty decent, yeah the premise was pretty silly admittedly, but for me it was still better then The Mist, which had too many one-dimensional characters and a completely asinine ending that completely fails at having any sort of emotional impact.

WHAT?! No emotional impact?! What ending did you see?! Are we thinking of the same movie?

I was with you about Dreamcatchers...which started off pretty good but I think the last 30 minutes was a disaster and hilarious for all the wrong reasons...meanwhile the ending to the Mist ranks among one of the most memorable for quite some time to me.

I agree with the mention of 1408 earlier in this thread, I liked that movie a lot actually.


So my list would be:
Misery
1408
Shawshank Redemption
The Mist
Dead Zone
The Shining

I liked the Green Mile quite a bit too...but haven't seen it in a while.


None of those are in any particular order

The ending didn't impact me at all because it felt WAAAYYYYYY too contrived for me to buy into it, and I wasn't particularly surprised by it either, when I heard people ranting about how "shocking" it was, it wasn't too difficult to predict the outcome. And I wasn't at all surprised to learn that the ending wasn't in the book, it didn't feel organic to the rest of the film, it just felt like a desperate attempt at being shocking and dramatic.

Yeah, I have to agree with this.

1. "The Green Mile"
2. "The Shining"
3. "The Shawshank Redemption"
4. "Stand by Me"
5. [tie] "Misery" and "The Dead Zone"