USA TODAY International Edition
King’s movies have ‘It’: The good, the bad & ‘The Shining’
Filmmakers have been adapting Stephen King books for decades, which means there have been some classics and some clunkers. Last month, The Dark Tower crashed and burned, but a new version of It had the biggest opening ever for a horror movie (more than $1
THE HORRIBLY BAD
5 CELL (2016)
At least the concept gets an A: Cellphones turn a large percentage of the population into mindless rage monsters. Execution, though? That’s a big fail, even for a faux zombie flick.
4 GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)
Insane stuff happens at a reopened textile mill, people start dying and it’s all because of … a ginormous rat. Even if the monstrous rodent wasn’t a specialeffects fumble, the film is Z-grade across the board.
3 THE DARK TOWER (2017)
The biggest sin here isn’t the filmmaking — which is certainly bad — but the complete whiff on creating an expansive fantasy world. Although Idris Elba does what he can as gunslinger Roland Deschain, everything around him is a miss.
2 THE MANGLER (1995)
The late director Tobe Hooper is a horror staple, but this travesty isn’t. Hooper rounds up another genre legend, Robert Englund, for this awful movie about a possessed laundry press, which cleans up in the competition for worst King movie villain.
1 DREAMCATCHER (2003)
A good cast (Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis and Timothy Olyphant) and ace director (Lawrence Kasdan) are completely wasted in an abhorrent mishmash of lifelong bromance, alien invasion and government conspiracy.