We count down the top 15 best Stephen King movies, ranked from worst to best; let’s explore the film adaptations of one of the world’s biggest writers!
What can you say about Stephen King? He’s one of the most recognizable names in literature and horror, having written many all-time classics and seemingly determined to never, ever stop. Seriously, you could fit a whole library with his stories alone. And, inevitably, we’ve gotten many films based on his work, a lot of which are… certainly interesting. It’s well-known that King adaptations have a very spotty track record. But when they hit, they really hit, properly translating his written material to the medium of film. So, we’re counting down the top 15 best Stephen King movies, ranked from worst to best, to take on that challenge!
15. Christine (1983)
Director: John Carpenter
Christine reads as one of the goofiest ideas King has ever had… and it kind of is. High school loser Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon, Dressed to Kill) purchases an old, run-down Plymoth Fury named Christine and gets it looking good as new. But the car is sentient and evil, going on a killing spree against the people in Arnie’s life. What makes such a silly concept watchable is director John Carpenter’s typical good sense of humor and campy direction that gives everyone, even the freaking car, tons of personality. Christine is a rather subdued presence a lot of the time, which makes you laugh and get nervous in equal measure when “she” starts acting up.
But what really makes the film for me is that Christine also – through vague means – alters Arnie’s personality. Like the Symbiote to Spider-Man, the car feeds off his insecurities and oppressed life to change him from a sassy, likeable dork to a possessive, egotistical sociopath, and Gordon’s performance makes that transition flawlessly. Christine is admittedly slow to start and maybe too light on extreme violence for a killer car movie made by the director of The Thing. But the movie’s charm, humor, creep factor, and fiery car chases still make it an entertaining ride.
14. Doctor Sleep
Director: Mike Flanagan
This 2019 film had a seemingly impossible task: adapt Stephen King’s sequel to his novel “The Shining”, but within the continuity of Stanley Kubrick’s film version. An adult Dan Torrence (Ewan McGregor, Bleeding Love) is still scarred from his father’s rampage at the Overlook Hotel. He crosses paths with Abra Stone (Kyleigh Curran), a girl who shares Dan’s psychic “shining” abilities and needs his help to escape a group of shine-devouring villains led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, Dune). Doctor Sleep is much more of a supernatural action thriller than a horror film, but it’s elevated by fantastic performances and dialogue that cut to the core of characters’ lingering pain.
You feel every single step Dan takes from traumatized recluse to cautious guardian to conqueror of his own inner demons, all handled in a way that feels within the spirit of the original Shining. The film takes great care in exploring more about the Overlook Hotel while still leaving the original film’s many interpretations intact, even if the tone of Doctor Sleep inevitably clashes with its predecessor. Director Mike Flanagan can only do so much to merge the very different styles of King and Kubrick, and both can feel like they’re stifling the other’s potential. But with the psychological components always front and center, Doctor Sleep manages to honor and expand upon The Shining while remaining its own weird thing.
13. The Green Mile (1999)
Director: Frank Darabont
There is a two-hour masterpiece trapped within this three-hour movie, but The Green Mile’s bloated length can’t nullify its powerful highs. The film takes place in 1935 on death row, where falsely accused inmate John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan, Sin City) shows his supernatural healing abilities to head guard Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks, Elvis). This cell block has an unyielding bleakness just by looking at it, made even worse by the constant reminder that its inmates will soon be dead. But there’s also a bittersweet hope lying deep beneath. Not hope of them surviving, but of the inmates getting some fulfillment out of what little time they have left, which the film profoundly applies to all life in general.
The late, great Duncan brings such bittersweet gentleness to Coffey that you’ll want to smash through the screen just to hug him at his lowest points, and Hanks comes across as firm but helpless as he witnesses an unjust system close down on this pure soul. It’s the excessive involvement of all the other characters that holds The Green Mile back. The movie gets really carried away with covering as much ground as possible, often stopping dead in its tracks for the sake of extra characterization that only distracts from the much stronger core. Thankfully, the final hour tightens up considerably and leads into one of the most heartbreaking endings of any Stephen King movie. It’s a tough road to walk but ultimately worth it in the end.
12. 1922 (2017)
Director: Zak Hilditch
On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is the very simple 1922. This period thriller is about farmer Wilfred James (Thomas Jane, The Mist) who murders his wife (Molly Parker) to stop her from selling their farm and leaving with their son Henry (Dylan Schmid, Woman of the Hour). The rest of the movie is just watching the farmer be slowly eaten alive by guilt, consequence, and exposed hypocrisy… and in this case, that’s all you need. Thomas Jane is superb at bringing nuance and subtlety to what initially looks like your typical rotten redneck archetype, especially when the narrow mentality that drove him to murder comes back to figuratively and literally haunt him.
It’s arguable that some subsequent events, including major decisions Henry later makes, would have played out the same way without a murder. But the crime closes many possible doors that could have gotten this family out of future dilemmas, trapping Wilfred in his own cycle of prideful masculinity that spreads like a rat-carried plague to his son. The consequences of his crime also contribute to the deterioration of his home, and I love how the accompanying imagery reflects his rotting humanity… what little of it hadn’t already rotted to begin with. 1922 came out in a year stacked with King adaptations, but it’s one of the most effectively straightforward ones out there… especially if you’re scared of rats.
11. Silver Bullet (1985)
Director: Daniel Attias
Of all the Stephen King adaptations out there, Silver Bullet is the most unfairly criticized in my eyes. It doesn’t sound like much: Marty (Corey Haim, The Lost Boys) is a handicapped kid whose town is ravaged by a werewolf. When he finds himself in the monster’s crosshairs, he’s aided by his sister (Megan Follows) and his very Gary Busey-like uncle who is played by Gary Busey (Predator 2). There are things you could criticize here, like some of the hokey acting and dialogue (from a screenplay by King himself) and the dropped plot point of mob mentality affecting the town. But none of that gets in the way of the sincere heart and warm familial bonds that lie beneath a monster movie exterior.
Marty’s young life has clearly been affected by his inability to walk, but we’re shown why that only makes him more emboldened to finally contribute something good to his community by facing the beast. Busey’s character has plenty of faults, but the humanity from his performance makes him a loveably wild foil. Silver Bullet even works in oodles of commentary when you learn the identity of the werewolf and the guilt-riddled justification in the wake of its actions. Does it look more like a savage bear than a werewolf? Maybe. But its campy menace matches the tone of the film. Silver Bullet is fun, well-paced, very well-constructed, and it puts way more effort into the writing than you’d probably expect. It’s not a gold medal of a movie, but it’s a strong silver.
10. 1408 (2007)
Director: Mikael Håfström
1408 has a lot of areas where it could have gone wrong, but it’s a great, fast-paced descent into… possibly Hell. Possibly an alternate dimension. Maybe just a man’s poisoned mind. Said man, Mike Enslin (John Cusack, Being John Malkovich), is a skeptical paranormal author who checks into a supposedly haunted hotel room, only to find himself succumbing to its tricks. The surreal, off-key atmosphere of the movie puts you in an uncertain state right away, leading quickly into the flurry of ghosts, self-moving objects, and distortions of space-time that mess with Mike’s – and, by extension, the audience’s – sense of where he even is.
There are several points where he may very well have left the room but is still plagued by malevolent forces. The outside world seems so unaligned with his plight that it’s somewhat possible none of what you’re seeing is real. Along the way, Mike’s cold, aloof exterior is revealed to have been hiding years of guilt and suffering that are now thrown right back in his face, almost like this experience is retribution for the emotional damage he ran away from and spread to others. The ghosts can be a little too over-the-top and the ambiguity could’ve been played up even more, but 1408 is among the most overlooked Stephen King horror films out there. Check in, and you’ll surely enjoy your stay.
9. Carrie (1976)
Director: Brian De Palma
Here it is: the very first Stephen King adaptation ever, based on his first novel, and one hell of a starting point. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek, Dying for Sex) is a shy teenage girl with budding psychic powers, but she’s constantly bullied at school and abused by her devoutly religious mother (Piper Laurie, Return to Oz) at home. An invitation to the prom has her believing she can finally find happiness, but… well, how do you think that goes? A lot of King tropes – psychic powers, religious abuse, oppressive parenting, bullies – are birthed right here, and legendary director Brian de Palma ensures they’re as fresh, raw, and gruesomely sad as possible.
Carrie gets incredibly uncomfortable from Minute 1 and keeps piling on, even when you think things might finally go well for Carrie. Her telekinesis is just an enhancement of the extreme difficulties she’s already experiencing as a young, troubled person. Hell, she goes through what a lot of teens and especially girls likely face… except they wouldn’t be in the center of this film’s explosively iconic finale. Carrie can meander from time to time with its light plot, but it’s all paid off in a climax so memorable, thrilling, and depressing that it rightfully eclipses everything else. But it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well had the earlier context and buildup not done its job. As a complete package, Carrie delivers everything it promises, setting the stage for all King adaptations to follow.
8. The Life of Chuck (2025)
Director: Mike Flanagan
Full Review: The Life of Chuck Review: Flanagan’s Best Yet
The Life of Chuck is a radically different, almost unrecognizable King film, and by far one of the hardest to wrap your head around. In the near future, human civilization is facing its final days, but the powers that be seem most concerned with the retirement of accountant Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston, Loki). We go on to learn about who Chuck is and his connection to the rest of the world… the answers to which are somehow really vague, straightforward, and heady all at once. You’re getting a dose of end-times drama, sci-fi, supernatural horror, a coming-of-age story, and even a dance movie, all in service of the film’s very strange intentions. The Life of Chuck refuses to fit in one box, which is one of many reasons I love it while others may hate it.
To be as non-spoilery as possible, this is a look at the many contrasts, opinions, experiences, and multitudes that exist within a single human being. By looking at Chuck’s life, the film beautifully examines how vast and diverse our own nature can be, but also how fragile and inevitably finite. Even before you catch onto what it’s doing, The Life of Chuck keeps you engaged with nonstop heaviness, then sheer joy and whimsy, and then a slow, poignant realization. Mike Flanagan is again the writer/director, taking on another very difficult adaptation and showing a side to him rarely seen before. I really can’t say anything more with this movie. You’ve just got to watch it for yourself. I can’t promise you’ll like it, but I guarantee you’ll come out of it feeling something.
7. The Long Walk (2025)
Director: Francis Lawrence
Full Review: The Long Walk Film Review: Surreal Silliness
Our second 2025 film in a row, The Long Walk is among the grimmest King adaptations of all time, with another fiendishly simple premise: in a dystopian America, 50 young men participate in an annual walking contest for riches. If you stop walking, you die. Two walkers are Ray (Cooper Hoffman, Licorice Pizza) and Peter (David Johnsson, Alien: Romulus), whose friendship under such pressure changes how they both view the world. Because 90% of the movie is spent walking in this one group, and you’re made constantly aware that anyone could slow down and die at any time, The Long Walk is fueled by endless momentum and tension, with nowhere to hide during its many merciless, ugly moments.
The film is made even more impactful by the distinguished characters at the center and their individual reasons for doing this, many of which scarily mirror the reasons we do anything strenuous under systems that force us to. Everyone also has their own outlook: some are hopeless, some believe in the good of the world, and some believe that things need to get worse before they get better. The Long Walk is frankly scarier than most of King’s horror films, and you can read it as anything from bittersweet to purely depressing. If you’ve got the stomach for it, step forward and see where it takes you.
6. Stand By Me (1986)
Director: Rob Reiner
There’s nothing supernatural, mind-bending, or even life-and-death going on here. Just good, old-fashioned drama. The Rob Reiner-directed Stand By Me centers around a group of four boys venturing outside of their Oregon homes to find a dead body- okay, so there’s a little death. But the film is really about the connection between these kids, played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell. For a story about childhood, you’d be surprised by how gritty and even harsh the environments here are. All of the kids are going through difficult challenges in life, and they have very few others to rely on even when certain people should be the most reliable. Their friendship isn’t just a privilege for them, but a necessity, as they come to realize during this initially unremarkable trip.
Whether or not the boys will end up sticking together throughout their lives, these experiences with one another are crucial. They prove the importance of just having a way to get from one day to the next, and they’re shown to have meaning long after the day is done. I’m just now realizing how similar this story is to The Long Walk in that sense. Despite the film’s frequent cruelty, its sentimentality still shines brightest. You never doubt the genuine love these rough-edged, snarky kids have for each other, and the film never feels like it’s holding back out of fear of getting too schmaltzy. With amazing acting, emotional imagery, and raw honesty, Stand By Me is one of the few Stephen King films that just about anyone can connect with.
5. Misery (1990)
Director: Rob Reiner
Read Also: Horror Movie Villains: Who’d be the worst roommate?
While Reiner was busy going on one of the best directorial hot streaks ever, I guess he wanted to flex further with two all-time great Stephen King films. His second, Misery, is easily my favorite setup of King’s: acclaimed novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan, The Godfather) suffers a car accident and is taken to the remote cabin of his biggest fan, nurse Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, Titanic). Unfortunately, she’s also his craziest fan, and when she learns his upcoming book isn’t to her liking, she holds him prisoner and forces him to write a new one. King could’ve slept through the creation of this novel, because an idea this juicy practically writes itself.
Misery proved to be ahead of its time in the satirical way it portrays obsessive, entitled fan culture. It’s a great portrait of an artist trying so hard to please a fan that it destroys a part of himself, and of course a scathing jab of the entitlement fans can have when fiction doesn’t go their way. Kathy Bates makes every second in this cabin nerve-wrackingly unpredictable, turning from calm to enraged on the turn of a dime. She even managed to clinch, believe it or not, the only Oscar that’s ever been given to a Stephen King movie. Reiner, however, deserves equal credit for his slow, lingering work behind the camera, framing everything so that you feel you’re trapped right alongside Paul. Serving as both a perfectly made horror film and a darkly funny microcosm of creator-fan dynamics, watching Misery will leave you feeling anything but miserable.
4. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Director: Taylor Hackford
I guess Kathy Bates had a knack for picking great King adaptations to star in. In this psychological drama, Dolores Claiborne (Bates) is accused of murdering her employer, decades after being accused of murdering her husband (David Strathairn, The Luckiest Man in America). This leads to a reunion with her estranged daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Annihilation). As it turns out, both women have years of trauma that they’ve dealt with in very different ways, and only now do they have the chance to reconcile with all the wrongs that have been done to them. Dolores wears her scars on her sleeve and keeps trucking through with no sanded-off edges, while Selena buries hers so deeply that, despite her being an accomplished adult, she’s yet to grow up in many ways or even actively realize what happened to her.
It’s like the island town this takes place in is the epicenter of festering resentment, casting clouds for decades. Leigh gives a hauntingly pained performance, and Bates is even better here than in Misery. Like several King films, Dolores Claiborne jumps around between the past and present, but very few films do it this scarily seamlessly with its dramatic angles, reality-bending transitions, and use of harsh and dull colors. The way you’re slowly given information in the same order that Selena is, discovering how many different trials one single woman embodies, is phenomenal. Dolores Claiborne is not one of the most famous King adaptations, but it really deserves to be. It’s as visceral, tearful, and all-encompassing as any other.
Yet somehow, it’s not even the best King movie where a terrible childhood event happens during a solar eclipse. That honor goes to…
3. Gerald’s Game (2017)
Director: Mike Flanagan
This is Mike Flanagan’s third film to show up here, locking him in as my favorite Stephen King director ever. And once again, he helms a story that seemed impossible to adapt: Jessie (Carla Gugino, Lisa Frankenstein) goes to a secluded house with her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood, Star Trek). They start a sex game involving handcuffing her to the bed, but Gerald dies of a heart attack, leaving Jessie trapped with no one around to help her. How do you make that interesting? Well, you start by giving Jessie mental constructs of her husband, herself, and even people from her past to talk to. Through them, we learn of the inner demons and – shocker – traumatic past that led her to where she is now, and everyone she conjures up lets us see how she imagines their perspective of her.
Every second of the film is oozing with creepy, bitter-cold, unpleasant energy. Jessie’s internal quest shows that her past has held her down long before those cuffs ever did, and there’s no longer anywhere for her, or us, to hide from it. Carla Gugino gives the best performance I’ve ever seen in a King film, which is doubly impressive considering she’s on screen pretty much the entire time and playing different versions of herself. Gerald’s Game sounds like a one-note idea, but it’s another adaptation that takes full advantage of its simplicity through masterful performances, editing, and dialogue.
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Director: Frank Darabont
Sorry, IMDb. I can only place your favorite movie as high as #2. The Shawshank Redemption, regarded as one of the best films ever made with or without King’s name, is about an upstanding banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins, Mystic River) who is falsely incarcerated at Shawshank prison. His presence serves as a hopeful inspiration for the other inmates, including longtime prisoner Red (Morgan Freeman, Se7en). Even more than in The Green Mile (directed by the same person, Frank Darabont), you’re engulfed in the entire bleak, callous world that exists within these prison walls. Nothing is hidden or sanitized, and you’re forced to sit there and witness the horror just like everyone there.
Dufresne is the embodiment of the wise but vulnerable good that breaks through to his fellow inmates, but his light only shines so brightly because of how much suffering he withstands. It’s his bond with Red that soars as the film’s golden heart, and Red himself is flat-out one of the best characters ever written. On top of being so resourceful and charismatic, he’s decades into a sentence that he likely deserved, but by powering through and forming genuine bonds with those beside him, he finds an unexpected form of… well, redemption. That’s what the film is about at its core: the worst people digging down to find the good in them, and then letting that get them through a place that tries to destroy it. I’m not doing Shawshank justice in this short recap; if you’ve never seen it, go and let its cold rain wash over you.
1. The Shining (1980)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
This movie’s been brought up already, and now here it is at the top. The Shining is the densest, most confounding, and most memorable a King adaptation has ever gotten. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men) has accepted a caretaker job at the secluded Overlook Hotel, where he now lives with his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall, Annie Hall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Jack slowly goes mad and attempts to murder his whole family. Why? Everyone may have a different theory. Jack may have always been nuts and just needed isolation from society to break those walls. Or the hotel may be absorbing the energy of its past insane dwellers, which is transferring into Jack as a form of madness begetting madness.
The Shining opens itself up to endless interpretations like that, down to literally the final shot, leaving a lot of first-time viewers asking what the hell they just saw. Go figure, given it’s a Stanley Kubrick movie. There’s nothing new I can add when discussing his tense editing, his spine-tinglingly slow camerawork, or the elaborate, ominously open production design of the hotel. Nicholson chews and chops up scenery like an increasingly psychotic Jim Carrey, giving one of the few performances that’s funny and terrifying in equal measure. You can see the hints of his instability right away, leading me to believe he was already easy prey for whatever supernatural force is bringing that madness out in full.
Or who knows; maybe we all have that same insanity deep within, and we need our own exact right circumstances for it to emerge. Poor Danny and Wendy can do nothing but survive it, with Danny’s already sensitive child mind being exposed to even more evil thanks to his psychic connections. That’s the beauty of The Shining: no matter what you think about the how and why, the film creates an intense experience that’s driven by heightened, extreme, sensory emotion above all else. It’s a roller coaster of razor-sharp tension and high-octane insanity that has more than earned its place as a pop culture icon. It’s a Stephen King story put through Kubrick’s very singular filter, but it’s still somehow the purest essence of who King is as a storyteller.
