Misery
★ ★★★
I really dug the simplicity and the creepiness of Misery. Although this was my first time seeing the film, I knew the end result before hitting play from just being a movie fan. Because Kathy Bates's performance is so iconic, it's been hard to miss clips of this movie in award shows or "Best Villian" lists. But that didn't keep me from enjoying the journey that Bates and James Caan takes. Both of them are perfectly cast and play wonderfully off of each other. Bates creates a legendary character, but I think it's Caan that really provides an extraordinary performance. He is physically asked to do so much while crawling all over this secluded cabin but he also is able to say so much with his reactions and tone without ever being overstated. Everyone associates him with Sonny, but I feel like this is the more impressive feat.
I really wish I could place myself as an audience member in 1990, not knowing anything about this movie. I'm sure the twists and turns were extremely shocking. It feels wrong to say that this hostage experience is fun, but I really delighted in William Goldman's clever screenplay. He toys with the audience, just as Annie Wilkes manipulates Paul Sheldon. The "romantic" dinner scene really stands out to me. I can just imagine hearing a movie crowd gasp in disappointment when Annie accidentally knocks over her glass of wine. I felt like I was watching a master class in set up, pacing and execution.
Rob Reiner has directed some of my favorite films so I was a bit surprised by some of the clunkiness of the reaction shots and editing of the action scenes. It's as if he feels constrained by the setting of the story, so he overcompensates a lot. But other times I appreciated his juxtaposition of the character's actions and the performance he was able to pull out of these two very different actors.
There are moments where Misery hasn't aged too well. It definitely feels like a product of 1990, but I've always been a sucker for tense films set in one location. Back then, this sort of fandom might have been viewed as absurd, but it seems eerily relevant today. And knowing that Stephen King's battle with alcoholism was the muse for this story makes it that much more layered and complex. Plus, the addition of a large, brown pig never hurts adding to the oddity of a horror film.
