Random Films Stephen King Has Awarded His Personal Stamp Of Approval (27 items)

• 

  (#1) Dawn of the Dead

  • Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Michael Barry, Lindy Booth, Jayne Eastwood, Boyd Banks, Inna Korobkina, R.D. Reid, Kim Poirier, Matt Frewer, Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, Ken Foree

  The 2004 film Dawn of the Dead is a remake of the 1978 zombie flick directed by George A. Romero. The story follows a group trying to survive the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall. King found the zombies horrifying, likening them to "terrorists who never quit." He also called the movie's first few minutes "one of the best opening sequences of a horror film ever made."

  The Dawn of the Dead remake grossed more than $102 million worldwide and had a strong critical showing as well.
• 

  (#2) The Descent

  • Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, Nora Jane Noone, MyAnna Buring, Oliver Milburn, Molly Kayll

  In 2005's The Descent, a group of women embark on a caving expedition, but it goes wildly astray. Directed and written by Neil Marshall, The Descent had fans among critics and audiences alike. As for King, he said of the movie:

  If I were to pick another movie to analyze closely, it would be this remarkable story of six women who go on a caving expedition and encounter a race of subhumans (who resemble del Toro's Pale Man, now that I think about it). What gives the movie its resonance is how the women play against each other - their very real resentments (and secrets) allow us to believe the monsters in a way that most horror movies do not. I never tire of saying this: In successful creepshows, it's not the FX, and mostly not even the monsters, that scare us. If we invest in the people, we invest in the movie... and in our own essential decency.
• 

  (#3) It

  • Jaeden Martell, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hamilton, Jake Sim, Logan Thompson, Owen Teague, Jackson Robert Scott, Stephen Bogaert, Stuart Hughes, Geoffrey Pounsett, Pip Dwyer, Molly Atkinson, Steven Williams, Elizabeth Saunders, Megan Charpentier, Joe Bostick, Ari Cohen, Anthony Ulc, Javier Botet, Katie Lunman

  King has appreciated a few movies adapted from his books. For example, he enjoyed 2017's It, which tells the story of a ragtag group of kids who take on the monstrous clown terrorizing them. The author praised the film:

  I had hopes, but I was not prepared for how good it really was. It's something that's different, and at the same time, it's something that audiences are gonna relate to. They're gonna like the characters. To me, it's all about character. If you like the characters... if you care... the scares generally work... I went back and saw it a second time, and I felt I was seeing things the second time through that I missed the first time.

  2017's It remake grossed more than $700 million and was a critical darling.
• 

  (#4) Final Destination

  • Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Daniel Roebuck, Chad Donella, Roger Guenveur Smith, Seann William Scott, Tony Todd, Amanda Detmer, Brendan Fehr

  Released in 2000, Final Destination was the first film in its eponymous franchise. It follows several young people who individually get hunted down by the Grim Reaper. King was a fan of the entire series:

  I love all these movies, with their elaborate Rube Goldberg setups - it's like watching R-rated splatter versions of those old Road Runner cartoons - but only the first is genuinely scary, with its grim insistence that you can't beat the Reaper; when your time is up, it's up.

  Many critics didn't enjoy Final Destination, but audiences did - hence all the sequels.
• 

  (#5) The Mist

  • Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Sternhagen, Alexa Davalos, Nathan Gamble, Chris Owen, Sam Witwer, Robert C. Treveiler, David Jensen

  The Mist is another King adaptation the author celebrated when it went to the silver screen, thanks to director Frank Darabont. The 2007 film, which both audiences and critics largely enjoyed, follows a group of people trapped in a grocery store as a deadly fog descends on their small town.

  "The ending will tear your heart out... but so will life, in the end," King said. He continued:

  Frank Darabont's vision of hell is completely uncompromising. If you want sweet, the Hollywood establishment will be pleased to serve you at the cineplex, believe me, but if you want something that feels real, come here. Darabont could have made a higher-budget film if he'd added a cheerful "It's all [okay], kiddies" ending, but he refused. His integrity and courage shine in every scene.
• 

  (#6) The Autopsy of Jane Doe

  • Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond, Michael McElhatton, Olwen Catherine Kelly, Jane Perry, Parker Sawyers, Mary Duddy

  Featuring Emile Hirsch and Brian Cox, this 2016 horror film lauded by King portrays a pair of coroners who are father and son. Critics highly praised this film, and it grossed around six million worldwide.

  King described it on Twitter: "Visceral horror to rival Alien and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone."
• 

  (#7) Stir of Echoes

  • Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Illeana Douglas, Liza Weil, Kevin Dunn, Conor O'Farrell, Jennifer Morrison, Zachary David Cope, Lisa Lewis, Eddie Bo Smith, Actor Strus, Stephen Walker, Mary Kay Cook, Larry Neumann

  Stir of Echoes, released in 1999, had moderate success both with critics and at the box office, grossing more than $21 million domestically. According to King:

  Writer/director David Koepp should be declared a national treasure. His adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1958 novel is an unsettling exploration of what happens when an ordinary blue-collar guy (Kevin Bacon) starts to see ghosts, thanks to a hypnotic suggestion.
• 

  (#8) The Last House on the Left

  • Sandra Cassel, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, F.J. Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, Gaylord St. James, Cynthia Carr, Ada Washington, Marshall Anker, Martin Kove, Ray Edwards

  Another remake King raved about was The Last House on the Left, a 2009 reimagining of Wes Craven's 1972 film. In the remake, directed by Dennis Iliadis, a couple torments several strangers who take shelter in their home during a storm. King called it "easily the most brilliant remake of the decade" and added: 

  The Dennis Iliadis version is to the original what a mature artist's painting is to the drawing of a child who shows some gleams of talent. From the opening shot - a dream-glide through the nighttime woods - the cinematography of Sharone Meir is a work of beauty and a study in contrasts... The 2009 Last House is the most brutal and uncompromising film to play American movie theaters since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

  While critics generally disliked The Last House on the Left, audiences did not feel the same.
• 

  (#9) The Strangers

  • Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, Glenn Howerton, Alex Fisher, Peter Clayton-Luce

  According to most critics, The Strangers, a 2008 horror movie written and directed by Bryan Bertino, was just another slasher movie, but it grossed more than nine times its budget of nine million. King described the film:

  An orchestration of growing disquiet and horror as a young couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) are set upon by a trio of masked psychotics. It starts slowly and builds from unease to terror to horror... Why is this happening? Just because it is. Like cancer, stroke, or someone going the wrong way on the turnpike at 110 miles an hour.
• 

  (#10) Event Horizon

  • Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee

  The 1997 science fiction/horror flick Event Horizon, which chronicles the hunt for a vanished spaceship, turned out to be a turkey among audiences and critics. But the film did get King's stamp of approval:

  Basically a Lovecraftian terror tale in outer space with a Creeping Unknown vibe, done by the Brits. The plot's messy, but the visuals are stunning and there's an authentic sense of horrors too great to comprehend just beneath the eponymous... event horizon.
• 

  (#11) The Changeling

  • George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, John Colicos, Jean Marsh, Madeleine Sherwood

  The Changeling, released in 1980, is a haunted house story that King applauded for having incited genuine fear without showing blood and guts:

  For supernatural horror, I like Peter Medak's film The Changeling, starring George C. Scott in perhaps his last great screen role. There are no monsters bursting from chests; just a child's ball bouncing down a flight of stairs was enough to scare the daylights out of me.

  Most film critics agreed with King's praise. You can watch the harrowing psychological horror on Shudder.
• 

  (#12) Village of the Damned

  • George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, Laurence Naismith, John Phillips, Richard Vernon, Jenny Laird, Richard Warner, Thomas Heathcote, Alexander Archdale, Martin Stephens, Charlotte Mitchell, Rosamund Greenwood, Bernard Archard, Susan Richards, Pamela Buck, John Stuart, Sarah Long, Peter Vaughan, Robert Marks, Billy Lawrence

  Village of the Damned is a spine-tingler from 1960. The tale of a village overrun by a bunch of creepy kids has inspired a few sequels and remakes, and many horror fans consider the movie a classic, including King:

  You can't do much better than Village of the Damned, directed by Wolf Rilla and - like Night of the Demon - shot in beautiful black and white. It's an adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, and George Sanders does a stellar job as the schoolmaster tasked with teaching some very strange pupils.
• 

  (#13) The Ruins

  • Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore, Joe Anderson, Dimitri Baveas, Jesse Ramirez, Luis Ramos

  A trip to an archaeological dig takes a dark turn in 2008's The Ruins. Many audience members and critics did not enjoy their visit to The Ruins, but King did. In Danse Macabre, he wrote:

  The Scott B. Smith-scripted adaptation of his novel isn't quite as creepy as the book, but the sense of dismay and disquiet grows as the viewer begins to sense that no one's going to get away. With its cast of mostly unknowns, this would play well on a double bill with [Zack] Snyder's Dawn [of the Dead] remake.
• 

  (#14) Deep Blue Sea

  • Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, LL Cool J, Aida Turturro, Daniel Bahimo Rey

  To many film fans and critics, it's a bit of a stretch to consider Deep Blue Sea a classic - but the movie's silliness is a big part of why King thought it was so memorable:

  Directed by the ever-popular Renny Harlin, who could potentially turn Heidi into an action flick, this movie about genetically engineered sharks, you could say, isn't up to very much... until, at the most unexpected point of the film, one of the supermakos rears up and bites Samuel L. Jackson in half! Yessss! I screamed out loud, and I treasure any horror movie that can make me do that.

  Deep Blue Sea was a critical dud, but a commercial success.
• 

  (#15) The Stepfather

  • Terry O'Quinn, Jill Schoelen, Shelley Hack, Charles Lanyer, Stephen Shellen, Stephen E. Miller, Robyn Stevan, Jeff Schultz, Lindsay Bourne, Anna Hagan, Gillian Barber, Blu Mankuma, Jackson Davies, Sandra Head, Gabrielle Rose, Richard Sargent, Margot Pinvidic, Rochelle Greenwood, Don S. Williams, Don MacKay, Dale Wilson, Gary Hetherington, Andrew Snider, Marie Stillin, Paul Batten, Sheila Paterson

  The Stepfather is a 1987 film starring Terry O'Quinn as a serial killer who preys on his new wife and stepdaughter. King singled out a memorable scene that makes this flick a favorite: "There's that classic moment when [the stepfather] goes blank and says, 'Saaay, who am I this time?' before bludgeoning his wife with a telephone."
• 

  (#16) Halloween

  • Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Danny Trejo, Danielle Harris, Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Dee Wallace, Kristina Klebe, Jenny Gregg Stewart, Brad Dourif, Udo Kier, Daeg Faerch, Ken Foree, Hanna Hall, Pat Skipper, Lew Temple, Richard Lynch

  In Danse Macabre, King briefly mentioned his appreciation for Rob Zombie's 2007 take on the seminal horror movie, Halloween, in which a masked killer named Michael Myers slays almost everyone who crosses his path. King called the Zombie/Myers collaboration "inspired" and the film an "excellent reimagining of Halloween."

  Rob Zombie's Halloween was a critical failure, though audiences couldn't get enough of Michael Myers.
• 

  (#17) The Hitcher

  • Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton, Neal McDonough, Lauren Cohn, Skip O'Brien, Travis Schuldt, Damon Carney, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Danny Bolero, Yara Martinez, Kyle Davis

  King was a big fan of the 2007 remake of The Hitcher, which is about a hitchhiker terrorizing a couple who gives him a lift. King observed: "Rutger Hauer in the original will never be topped, but this is that rarity, a reimagining that actually works. And Sean Bean is great in the role Hauer originated."

  He concluded, "Do we really need this film? No. But it's great to have it, and the existential theme of many great horror films - terrible things can happen to good people, at any time - has never been so clearly stated."

  But King was one of the few who liked the remake of The Hitcher - critics panned it, and box office receipts were marginal.
• 

  (#18) Bird Box

  • Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Danielle Macdonald, Lil Rel Howery, Tom Hollander, BD Wong, Julian Edwards, Vivien Lyra Blair, Sarah Paulson, John Malkovich, Machine Gun Kelly

  Stephen King knows a good horror when he sees one, despite what Rotten Tomatoes may say. The crowd-aggregated movie review site gives the Sandra Bullock Netflix original feature a mere 63%, but King tweeted shortly after its December 2018 premiere and suggested the poor ratings had nothing to do with the actual storyline and content of the suspenseful monster movie.

  "I was absolutely riveted by BIRD BOX (Netflix)," King posted. "Don't believe the lukewarm reviews, which may in part have been caused by reviewers' ambivalence to the streaming platform, as opposed to theatrical releases."

  In Bird Box, Bullock plays a mother attempting to bring her two children to safety in the aftermath of a mysterious but deadly force wiping out society. "The catch: If you see it, you die," which has already led to an entire subgenre of Bird Box memes.
• 

  (#19) Duel

  • Dennis Weaver, Tim Herbert, Charles Seel, Eddie Firestone, Shirley O'Hara, Lucille Benson, Alexander Lockwood, Amy Douglass, Gene Dynarski, Carey Loftin

  Initially debuting in 1971 as a movie made for American television, Duel is an action/road thriller directed by Steven Spielberg. "It's his most inventive film, and stripped to the very core: one man, one truck, one fight to the death," King said.
• 

  (#20) Crimson Peak

  • Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Burn Gorman, Leslie Hope, Doug Jones, Jonathan Hyde, Bruce Gray, Emily Coutts, Alec Stockwell

  Guillermo del Toro's 2015 film Crimson Peak is a combination of Gothic romance and unsettling creepiness. In other words, it was right up King's alley, as he tweeted: "Was treated to a screening of Guillermo del Toro's new movie, Crimson Peak, this weekend. Gorgeous and just f*cking terrifying."

  The movie had moderate success with both film critics and moviegoers.
• 

  (#21) The Witch

  • Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Bathsheba Garnett, Sarah Stephens, Julian Richings, Wahab Chaudhry

  The 2015 film The Witch, a supernatural period piece, chronicles the strange goings-on in a Puritan family that comes face to face with the evil that lives in the surrounding forest. King took to Twitter to recommend the film: "The Witch scared the hell out of me. And it's a real movie, tense and thought-provoking as well as visceral."

  Audiences and critics largely agreed with King's verdict on The Witch.
• 

  (#22) The Body Snatcher

  • Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Russell Wade, Rita Corday, Sharyn Moffett, Donna Lee

  The Robert Wise-directed 1945 film The Body Snatcher brought together two horror cinema legends: Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The story centers on a surgeon who depends on two gravediggers to supply him with bodies for medical experiments.

  In King's nonfiction book Danse Macabre, he called The Body Snatcher "one of the '40s best. And as an example of... breaking taboos - it positively shines."
• 

  (#23) The Blair Witch Project

  • Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard, Bob Griffith, Jim King, Sandra Sanchez, Ed Swanson, Patricia DeCou

  King relished The Blair Witch Project, the classic documentary-style horror flick released in 1999. Following a group of friends lost in the woods, the low-budget fright fest was a smash success with movie critics and audiences alike. An excerpt from King's short essay on the film:

  One thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing looks real. Another thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing feels real. And because it does, it's like the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive and it turned out the cat jumped up on your bed and went to sleep on your chest.

  The idea is complete genius, and a big budget would have wrecked it. Shot on a shoestring (a ragged one), this docu-horror movie gained its punch not in spite of the fact that the "actors" hardly act at all, but because of it.

  Blair Witch, it seems to me, is about madness - because what is that, really, except getting lost in the woods that exist even inside the sanest heads?
• 

  (#24) Night of the Demon

  • Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Athene Seyler, Reginald Beckwith

  Night of the Demon finds a psychologist delving into homicides committed by a satanic cult. The film - known as Curse of the Demon in its trimmed-down version - has a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

  King said of the 1957 British horror classic, "Although it's old school, I love Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon, a pretty wonderful adaptation of M.R. James' story, 'Casting the Runes'... The horror here is pretty understated, until the very end."
• 

  (#25) Les Diaboliques

  • Simone Signoret, Michel Serrault, Paul Meurisse, Jean Lefebvre, Charles Vanel, Véra Clouzot, Pierre Larquey, Robert Dalban, Jean Brochard, Georges Chamarat, Camille Guérini, Noël Roquevert, Jacques Hilling, Aminda Montserrat

  Les Diaboliques is a classic example of French cinema directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. This 1955 film is creepy and clever in its meditative unfolding of two women's stories - a school headmaster's wife and his mistress - as they exact revenge on their common romantic partner.

  King described the movie as a "suspense-horror masterpiece, as terrifying now as it was back in 1955. [Clouzot] out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock."
• 

  (#26) X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes

  • Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone, John Hoyt, Don Rickles, Morris Ankrum, Lorie Summers, Dick Miller, Kathryn Hart, Jonathan Haze, John Dierkes, Vickie Lee, Barbara Morris

  X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, a 1963 sci-fi pulp masterpiece directed by Roger Corman, stars Ray Milland as a scientist whose work with X-ray technology goes frighteningly wrong.

  King praised the movie in Dance Macabre as "one of the most interesting and offbeat little horror movies ever made, and one that ends with one of the most shuddery gross-out scenes ever filmed."
• 

  (#27) Sorcerer

  • Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri, Peter Capell, Karl John, Friedrich von Ledebur, Chico Martinez, Joe Spinell, Rosario Almontes

  Directed by William Friedkin, the 1977 action/mystery film Sorcerer revolves around expatriates in South America tasked with transporting dangerous dynamite over a risky landscape. And it's apparently King's favorite movie - ever. He told the British Film Institute:

  My favorite film of all time - this may surprise you - is Sorcerer, William Friedkin's remake of the great Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear. Some may argue that the Clouzot film is better; I beg to disagree.

  King told Entertainment Weekly that the film "generate[s] suspense through beautiful simplicity." While Sorcerer was not popular upon its release, critics have since reevaluated it with favorable reviews.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking