It's pretty much common knowledge that Stephen King adaptations are never as good as their hardbound and printed counterparts, but you kind of have to bite your tongue after saying that when it comes to Misery. Adapted very faithfully from King's tome by director Rob Reiner and writer William Goldman, it's a film that is every bit as strong as the book it is based on.

The film follows an author named Paul Sheldon (James Caan) who, after talking with his agent (Lauren Bacall), leaves the big city and heads into the country where he gets into a car wreck out in the middle of nowhere. Where it not for a hefty country woman named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), a former nurse who hauls him from the wreckage and brings him back to her home, he surely would have died. When Paul regains consciousness, he finds Annie there, happy to serve his every need. While this might seem like a stroke of luck for Paul, it turns out that Annie is his self proclaimed number one fan, and that she's obsessed with his novels.

At first Paul thinks she's maybe just a little strange, but when Annie coerces him into writing her the novel she wants to read. With little regard to the story Paul wants to tell, Annie's kindness turns twisted and psychotic and he finds himself alone and at the mercy of a very crazy woman in the middle of nowhere...

While Misery benefits from some great writing and some very strong directing, what really makes it work are the performances. James Caan is completely believable and entirely sympathetic in his role, and he plays his character's sense of confusion and trepidation perfectly. We believe him in the part and as such, we can get behind him and hope he's going to be okay. The real star of the show, however, is Kathy Bates, who completely throws herself into the character of Annie Wilkes. She won an Oscar for her work here, and rightly so, as she pulls it all off with such unnerving accuracy that we buy her hook, line and sinker. There are scenes here where it's almost as if someone has flipped a switch inside her that allows her to go from kind caregiver to lunatic fan at the drop of a hat. Had this role been played by anyone else, it's hard to imagine it being nearly as successful. Bates hits all the right notes and literally steals the show from everyone else in the cast.

A large part of what makes Misery one of King's more frightening stories is that it's completely plausible and grounded in reality. Reiner's adaptation doesn't change any of that and it's still very much a story that could happen in real life. This gives Misery considerably more tension and stronger scares than a horror movie that relies on less likely plot devices, be they supernatural or spiritual, as we don't really have to suspend our disbelief here very much at all. For lack of a better cliché to use, let it suffice to say that Misery will keep you on the edge of your seat.

There's also a wicked sense of dark humor running through the storyline that helps make the more horror-centric scenes all the stronger. The humor puts you at ease, allowing the more intense moments to sucker-punch you, giving them more impact and making the movie all the stronger for it. While this is a film that earns its R rating, it's not an exploitative picture in the least. It's violent without being excessive and truly frightening without ever going too far over the top. It's a rare breed of horror film that should appeal even to those who tend to dismiss the genre or aren't comfortable with its expected trappings and one of the best films of the early 1990s.

Video:

Misery is presented in a very strong 1.85.1 1080p anamorphic widescreen presentation courtesy of some excellent AVC/MPEG 4 encoding. The image is strong and its grain structure remains intact. Detail is vastly improved over the standard definition release as is color reproduction and the picture generally has a very nice, lifelike and film-like look and texture to it. There are a couple of spots that show some minor noise reduction but thankfully this isn't a constant issue. You'll be able to pick out a lot more detail in close up shots but also appreciate the detail that went into the set design as the background's have even more of a country home authenticity than ever before. All in all, Misery looks very good indeed in its Blu-ray debut.