'Misery' at 25: A masterpiece of psychological scares

Last night I revisited the Rob Reiner classic Misery and it dawned on me that the movie came out 25 years ago at roughly this time of year. I was of course too young to see it in theaters but it did become a staple in my house once it came out on home video.

Although its got it's brutally violent moments, it's one of those movies my parents let slip through the cracks. So I saw it at probably an inappropriate age and it has always stuck with me.

After The Shining (which may be my new favorite movie of all time), The Shawshank Redemption, and Carrie -- it's one of the best adaptations of Stephen King's work ever put on screen.

I've never read the original King text, so I don't know how the film compares. But on its own terms this is a top-notch thriller, featuring extraordinary performances from Kathy Bates and James Caan.

It's sometimes classified as a horror film, and I guess in some ways it is. Although there isn't any supernatural element and the entire premise is plausible, which is one of the things I love about the movie.

Watching it in 2015, I was struck by how well it holds up and the reality that a movie like this could probably never get made today, let alone become a hit. Reiner took an aging former A-lister whose career was struggling after a series of flops and an unknown, not traditionally attractive Broadway actress and sold it to not just to studios, but audiences. Misery was a big, word-of-mouth hit.

Imagine if someone tried to make this movie today with say, Val Kilmer, and some nobody who could never make the pages of Maxim. It would probably be direct-to-video fodder. But in 1990, you could still make a psychological thriller without CGI and pyrotechnics. Just two actors giving tour-de-force performances under heightened circumstances.

For the uninitiated: Caan plays a best selling author behind a series of cheesy romance novels looking to branch out of his comfort zone. After finishing an autobiographical novel about his youth he is in a terrible car crash amid a blizzard. He is "rescued" by his self-proclaimed number one fan -- a manic depressive (to say the least) ex-nurse played by Bates. Caan's character goes from being patient to captive as Bates drifts deeper into madness.

James Caan in Misery

This all could be silly (if not offensive) were it handled badly, but Reiner has the good sense to give both characters plenty of space to develop three-dimensional personalities. He also wisely avoids certain stock conventions of the genre. For instance, the Caan character is exceptionally bright. He recognizes quickly that he isn't safe and does what we'd all hope we'd do if we were in such a horrific situation.

Meanwhile, Bates won a rare Oscar for this type of film for a reason. She is both funny and scary as Annie Wilkes, a completely un-self-aware person who lives for Liberace, Love Connection and her pet pig (also named Misery). She does a brilliant job of conveying a sense of profound loneliness that may not make you pity Wilkes, but at least understand her.

There are over-the-top performances and then there are controlled over-the-top performances. Bates has always been a quality actress, I can't remember a movie I've ever seen her be bad in, and this role still resonates because she went to some pretty wild places but with an assurance of an actress who knows her craft and can ground extreme material in reality.

Even though I know the movie well, it has some jump scares that still get me. The infamous "hobbling" scene still makes me cringe. And Wilkes' turns of phrase ("Mr, Man," "all oogie," etc.) are fixed in my memory to this day.

If you haven't seen Misery, you should really check it out, because they don't make them like this anymore.