Actually good Stephen King movies

Ash Walker • 01 Sep 2025 Features

Sometimes, dead is better… but not with these bangers.

Stephen King is one of the most beloved (and prolific) writers working today, and he pretty much hasn’t stopped churning out classic after classic since first publishing Carrie way back in 1974.

As you might expect, King’s work has been eagerly sought after by Hollywood for years and, as you might also expect, a lot of the subsequent adaptations of his stories have been, well, a bit rubbish.

But there are some real gems in there. For every Mangler, you get a Misery. For every Sometimes They Come Back, you get a Shawshank Redemption. And to celebrate the latest film based on a King story - The Life of Chuck - here are our favourites.

The Shining (1980)

Credit: The Shining | 4K Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment (Warner Bros. Entertainment, YouTube)

King famously hates this adaptation of his third novel, and it’s easy to see why. In the book, Jack Torrance is a much more sympathetic, tragic figure - a deeply personal stand-in for King himself, dealing with his own fears about alcoholism and child abuse.

In the movie Jack - as portrayed by Jack Nicholson - is nuts from the word go, and his stint in the eerily abandoned Overlook Hotel only serves to amp up his psychotic, violent nature. There’s just none of the heart and humanity of King’s source novel in Stanley Kubrick’s film version.

What it does have, though, is sheer unadulterated horror. This is a truly scary film, even 45 years later, each eerily symmetrical frame dripping with unease and that ominous score blasting away in the background.

Throw in a pair of creepy twin ghosts, a hedgemaze and an elevator full of blood and you’ve got one of the most terrifying films ever made.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Credit: STEPHEN KING'S DOCTOR SLEEP - Final Trailer [HD] (Warner Bros., YouTube)

Speaking of the Overlook Hotel…

Many King fans assumed this belated sequel to The Shining would be pretty much unfilmable. Kubrick’s movie is so monumental that there would be no way a filmmaker could ignore it, but it also directly contradicts the events of the novel - especially the ending which, in the book, sees Jack sacrifice himself to save his family, destroying the evil hotel in the process.

It’s an act that’s vitally important to Doctor Sleep. So how could anyone possibly find a way to marry those disparate threads? Not to mention successfully take a narrative swerve away from ghosts and towards a travelling troupe of psychic vampires?

Enter master horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan.

Flanagan has a knack for nailing the heart and soul of King’s books (see also Gerald’s Game and The Life of Chuck), and that’s his masterstroke here. He takes the chills of Kubrick’s film and blends them with the humanity of King’s original novel, remixing the story accordingly.

Best of all, the film actually improves on the novel’s ending, bringing a now-adult Danny Torrance back to the Overlook for an epic psychic showdown with the forces of evil.

The Green Mile (1999)

Credit: The Green Mile | 4K Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment (Warner Bros. Entertainment, YouTube)

There are some directors who just get Stephen King, and it's those guys who make the best adaptations, time and again. You’ve got your Mike Flanagans and your Rob Reiners (more on him shortly), but perhaps the most distinguished of the lot is Frank Darabont.

He came out of the gate swinging with The Shawshank Redemption - widely considered to be one of the best films of all time - and soon followed it up with another Kingian prison drama, this time with a little supernatural spice sprinkled on top.

The Green Mile follows Paul Edgcombe (Tom Hanks), the head guard on death row in a sweaty Louisiana prison, and John Coffey (Michael Clark Duncan), the gentle, hulking convict who may be ‘one of God’s true miracles’.

It’s a long, meandering movie, and it can be a little cheesy at times, but the schmaltz is expertly balanced with some moments of visceral horror (the bad execution of Del) and some of the most purely hateable villains ever committed to screen (looking at you Percy Wetmore).

And if you’re not a puddle of tears by the end, you’re made of sterner stuff than us.

Stand By Me (1986)

Credit: Stand by Me (1986) Trailer #1 | Movieclilps Classic Trailers (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

On the polar opposite end of King movies to The Shining, Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me is all heart, little horror. It also happens to be Stephen King’s favourite adaptation of his work - and it’s not hard to see why.

Stand By Me is a beautifully simple, nostalgic story about a bunch of kids who decide to trek down the railroad tracks to find a dead body. That’s it. There are no ghosts, no evil child-eating demons - just a group of friends, hanging out.

On paper it could be a little boring, but the kids are charming and their mundane dramas are totally compelling. Plus the movie just perfectly captures that childhood feeling of endless summers and looking for adventure in the most mundane places.

The Mist (2007)

Credit: The Mist (2007) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

Another Frank Darabont joint, The Mist is a very different beast to his previous efforts - prestige dramas like Shawshank and The Green Mile - but it’s still a great watch.

When a mysterious fog rolls into a small New England town, the residents soon discover that there are creatures lurking in the murk. Yes, this is a full-on monster movie, with some truly disturbing creature designs - especially the spiders with human teeth.

It’s also a fascinating, terrifying examination of humanity in microcosm, as the survivors trapped in a grocery store begin to split into factions and turn on one another. And that ending has to be one of the bleakest ever committed to film.

Not an uplifting, life-affirming watch like some other King favourites, but as far as horror movies go, this is an all-timer.

It Chapters 1 and 2 (2017 & 2019)

Credit: IT - Official Trailer 1 (Warner Bros., YouTube)

You could cynically say that this pair of movies - especially the first one - is just cashing in on the popularity of ‘80s nostalgia-bait shows like Stranger Things. And you’d be right. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t, you know, really good.

Adapting King’s mammoth tome would be a daunting prospect for anyone, but director Andy Muschietti makes it look easy. His genius take? To split the time-hopping, generation-spanning source material into two distinct films, each focussing on a different era of the Losers Club - as kids in the ‘80s, and as adults in the present day.

The Losers themselves are portrayed winningly by some excellent young talent as children - including Stranger Things’ own Finn Wolfhard - and, in the slightly less memorable second part, an all-star ensemble cast featuring the likes of James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader.

But really, It is all about the villain. Pennywise the Dancing Clown is probably King’s most famous monster, and he’s brilliantly brought to life in this pair of movies by Bill Skarsgård.

More childlike and ethereal than Tim Curry’s (equally terrifying) version from the ‘90s, this Pennywise is also much more of a shapeshifter, as he is in King’s novel, taking on the forms of the things that scare our heroes. Things like a noseless, leprous beggar or, memorably, the creepy, distorted woman featured in a painting in a rabbi’s office.

Truly the stuff of nightmares.

Christine (1983)

Credit: Christine (1983) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

Christine is a story about adolescence, obsession and the dangers of toxic attachment. It’s also about a haunted car that comes to life and kills people.

Masterfully directed by genre legend John Carpenter (The Thing), Christine the movie becomes just like the eponymous evil car - a stripped-back, lean, mean killing machine. It’s packed full of suspense, backed up by Carpenter’s own pulsating, synth-heavy score, and some practical effects that are still genuinely mind-blowing to this day.

For those not in the know, Christine follows teen loser Arnie Cunningham, who develops an unhealthy attachment to the 1958 Plymouth Fury that he’s been repairing. In fact, the car might be haunted by its previous owners… and the ghosts may just take Arnie himself for a spin.

It’s a lengthy novel for such a simple (and kinda goofy) premise, but Carpenter’s film strips the story back to its essential beats, streamlining the narrative and actually improving on the original in a big way.

Misery (1990)

Credit: MISERY (1990) | Official Trailer | MGM Studios (Amazon MGM Studios, YouTube)

You can’t help but feel that King was exorcising some demons with this one… Misery is the story of a popular writer who, following a car accident, winds up in the ‘care’ of a deranged superfan. And when she discovers that he’s about to kill off his most popular character, she won’t let him leave until he changes the story.

Director Rob Reiner - who delivered a much more wholesome King experience in Stand By Me - keeps things claustrophobic by rarely ever leaving the bedroom where Paul Sheldon is trapped. The audience feels trapped along with him, and feels every bit of his frustration as his futile attempts to escape are constantly interrupted by the unhinged Annie Wilkes.

Annie herself is a fantastic creation - sometimes sweet, sometimes sullen, sometimes dangerously depressed and angry. Despite being just an ordinary woman, she’s one of King’s greatest monsters, and as played by Kathy Bates (in an Oscar-winning performance) she’s truly terrifying.

It’s an almost unbearably tense film. And the whole thing builds and builds until finally erupting into violence in the infamous hobbling sequence, which is still absolutely excruciating to watch.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Credit: The Shawshank Redemption | Official Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment (Warner Bros. Entertainment, Youtube)

Probably the best King adaptation ever put to film - if not one of the best movies ever made - Frank Darabont’s prison epic is everything that makes Stephen King so great. It’s got horror, suspense, tragedy, cheesy humour and, of course, more heart and humanity than ten Pixar movies.

When banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, he’s sentenced to life in Shawshank State Prison. There he runs afoul of brutal guards, predatory inmates and a corrupt warden, but he also meets fellow lifer Red (Morgan Freeman), and the two strike up a profound friendship.

The whole thing is a testament to the human spirit, to never giving up hope, even when times get bad. And they do get very bad for poor old Andy before the end.

But what an end it is.

Without going into spoiler territory (although surely most people have seen Shawshank by now?), the closing moments are triumphant, bringing swift justice to the villains and the promise of a better life to come for our heroes. There’s no way you won’t leave the movie feeling inspired to get out there and enjoy life.

It’s like Andy says - you either get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.