Stephen King Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best
and Joal Ryan, for Metacritic – August 2, 2017
Last updated May 2023 to add The Boogeyman
Recent releases It and The Dark Tower have been erected on the most fertile, if haunted, of Hollywood grounds: Stephen King territory.
While conventional wisdom says King's horror tales "don't translate well to film," a Metacritic look at his theatrical releases shows that the vast majority of them received, at worst, mixed-to-average critical notices. Nine films, or about one-quarter of the titles, are in the green.
Set in the titular year, this 2017 Netflix feature from Australian director Zak Hilditch stars Thomas Jane as a farmer who confesses to murder and becomes haunted (possibly literally) by what he has done. Critics think it's a mostly successful, if "unsurprising," adaptation of King's 2010 novella.
“While nothing groundbreaking, the story mines a degree of profundity out of the traditional supernatural thriller tropes at its core.” —Eric Kohn, IndieWire