The 10 Worst Stephen King Movies Of All Time

We here at Screen Rant love us some Stephen King, the way we like roofs over our heads and food in our bellies. There’s just something essential about his work. However, as even the most die hard reader knows, there have been an awful lot of bad adaptations of his work. The upcoming Cell has some toxic buzz attached to it, despite the straightforward source material and the reuniting of John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, who were so effective together in 1408, another King adaptation. Still no matter how bad Cell is, it’s certain to have lots of company. Here are The 10 Worst Stephen King Movies Of All Time. 1. Cell (2016) looper.com Seventeen years after appearing together in 1408, John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson reunited for 2016's Cell. Unfortunately, this time their efforts were nowhere near as successful. The plot centers on Clay Riddell (Cusack), who's determined to reunite with his son after a malevolent electronic signal turns cell phone users into mindless killers. Along the way, he teams up with train driver Tom McCourt (Jackson) in order to better their chances of survival. While the novel was generally well-received for it's technophobic take on the traditional zombie trope, the movie suffered a far less positive fate. 2. Graveyard Shift (1990) looper.com 1990's Graveyard Shift still stands as one of the worst King adaptations. In a Maine textile mill where a drifter (David Andrews) has taken a job, several overnight employees of the mill have died recently, and the egomaniacal foreman (Stephen Macht) sends the drifter—and others—down into the basement of the mill to investigate. To put it politely, the short story didn't translate well to the screen. It's kind of a shame, really, because the acting in Graveyard Shift isn't bad. The movie even performed fairly well at the box office, eventually earning over $11 million. If you're going to make the plunge and watch, keep an eye out for the performances of both Macht and Brad Dourif. You might know Dourif better as "Wormtongue" from The Lord of the Rings, but he does an excellent turn here as a crazy exterminator. 3. Thinner (1996) looper.com Despite having excellent source material, Tom Holland's 1990 adaptation of Thinner just couldn't pull it off. When obese and morally bankrupt lawyer Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke) accidentally runs over and kills a gypsy woman, he uses his court connections to get off the hook. The woman's elderly father takes revenge by placing a curse upon Halleck, one which soon has him uncontrollably losing weight to the point of emaciation. The premise is definitely scary, but the effect falls flat on the big screen—especially when we're confronted with Burke in an atrociously fake latex fat suit that only gets slightly less hilarious as he sheds the pounds. The filmmakers also chose to make Billy's wife (Lucinda Jenney) an adulterer, leaving the story without any sympathetic—or even likable—characters. 4. Maximum Overdrive (1986) looper.com Stephen King's first (and only) directorial effort, 1986's Maximum Overdrive, is largely considered a bomb, but it's still hard not to love. When Earth passes through the tail of a comet, once-inert machines suddenly come to life and go on a murderous rampage against humans. At a truck stop, a bland protagonist played by Emilio Estevez and an odd assortment of other unremarkable characters settle in to wait out the semi trucks that have them pinned down inside. Maximum Overdrive is mostly a stinker of a movie, and it drags too long, especially during the second half. That being said, it has a killer soundtrack from AC/DC, and there are some pretty neat shots peppered throughout, proving that King wasn't completely hopeless as a director. If you have an irrational fear of electric carving knives or drawbridges, you probably watched Maximum Overdrive as a kid. To get Maximum enjoyment, watch the first 30 minutes or so, then turn it off and listen to the Who Made Who album at top volume. 5.Needful Things (1993) looper.com Try to sit through the 1993 adaptation of Needful Things, and you might be ready to sell your soul to the Devil before the end. In King's often-featured fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow) opens an antiques store called "Needful Things." Many of the town's residents soon find their heart's desire fulfilled by the store's items—some of which have a distinctly supernatural bent. Gaunt's prices are nearly too good to be true: a shockingly low amount of cash, plus a "favor" to be repaid later. Gaunt's favors usually involve "pranking" someone else in the town, and these mean-spirited tricks cause old dislikes and minor disagreements to flare up into feuds worth killing over. Despite a running time of 120 minutes, Needful Things gives us only a cursory look at many of Castle Rock's residents, leaving us with a bloated cast audiences will struggle to keep track of, let alone care about. Instead, it jumps between escalating pranks like a particularly violent episode of Punk'd. The only standout performance comes from Von Sydow, who positively revels in his devilish portrayal of the evil Gaunt. Not long after its theatrical run, TBS aired an extended 3-hour version of Needful Things. Unfortunately, it does little to solve the movie's fatal flaw: nonexistent character development. 6. The Mangler (1994) looper.com It's hard to say what's more inexplicable: that Tobe Hooper's 1994 adaptation of King's short story The Mangler managed to score better on Rotten Tomatoes than Maximum Overdrive, or that it spawned two sequels. The movie stars the once-formidable Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street) as sinister laundry-service owner Bill Gartley, and Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs) as the police officer who investigates a series of mysterious deaths at Gartley's business. He soon finds (with the help of his demonologist brother-in-law) that a laundry press is to blame—a laundry press possessed by a demon and activated by the presence of blood and over-the-counter antacids. Yes, really. The original short story was threadbare to begin with, but tongue-in-cheek and appropriate for the magazine that published it. Hooper, however, ignored the opportunity to make a campy movie that pokes fun at itself; instead, we're left with schlocky gore that goes on way too long and takes itself much too seriously for a movie about a laundry machine that eats people. 7. Riding the Bullet (2004) looper.com When King published his 2000 novella Riding the Bullet, it was generally well-received by critics and made history as the first mass-distributed e-book. The movie follows the journey of Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson), a neurotic and depressed college student whose obsession with worst-case scenarios nearly drives him to suicide. After receiving news that his mother has had a stroke, Parker decides to hitchhike, catching a ride with the mysterious George Staub (David Arquette). Filmmaker Mick Garris has adopted Stephen King's tales for television or film on several occasions, but his 2004 take on Riding the Bullet is mediocre at best. Skip this one, or you'll find yourself—like Parker—begging to be let off of a ponderous and boring ride. 8. Dreamcatcher (2003) looper.com King's 2001 novel Dreamcatcher was admittedly not one of the author's favorites. It was written in 1999, when he was "using a lot of Oxycontin" while convalescing after being hit by a car. Perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising, then, that Lawrence Kasdan's 2003 film adaptation of the book is among the worst. The movie follows four lifelong friends—who have psychic powers—on a winter hunting trip to upstate Maine. They soon find themselves caught between invading aliens and the U.S. military forces trying to contain them. Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, and Jason Lee do fine work as the friends, but Morgan Freeman falls flat as an overzealous commander with ridiculously distracting eyebrows. Kasdan gave us an overly long, free-associating mess of a movie—one that could have done much better if he'd just picked a tone and stuck with it. 9. The Lawnmower Man (1992) looper.com If you're a fan of this short story from King's 1978 collection Night Shift, don't be fooled by Brett Leonard's 1992 film The Lawnmower Man—it's an adaptation in name only. Other than the title (which was originally Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man) and a single scene, the movie bears little resemblance to the source material. King even ended up suing New Line Cinema over the film, forcing them to remove his name from the title. Instead of a nutty little tale about a lawn mowing service gone horribly wrong, the film steals from Flowers for Algernon and Frankenstein for its mishmash plot, which centers on a doctor (Pierce Brosnan) who chooses a mentally impaired greenskeeper (Jeff Fahey) to be the subject of his experiments in intelligence-boosting via virtual reality and a drug cocktail. Follow King's lead on this one, and give the hackneyed story of The Lawnmower Man a hard pass. 10. The Night Flier (1997) looper.com The Night Flier stays fairly true to King's original short story, but that doesn't mean that this 1997 adaptation is a good movie. Miguel Ferrer plays tabloid reporter Richard Dees, who attempts to hunt down a serial killer using a small aircraft to travel from town to town—leaving a grisly trail of victims in his wake. Dees soon finds that this is no ordinary criminal, and must also deal with an eager-beaver competitor from his tabloid (Julie Entwisle) who's trying her hardest to steal his scoop. While the short story's version of Dees was an unlikeable cynic who finds his worldview shaken by what he finds, the movie's script (and Ferrer's flat performance) makes Dees a complete jerk with no redeeming qualities. If you decide to watch The Night Flier, you'll no doubt find yourself rooting for the vampire to win. Credits: looper.com Share this story on Facebook with your friends. Related: Top 80’s Movies The Have Stood The Test Of Time Forever Young: The Best High School Movies Ever