Perhaps even more notable is Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Gerald’s Game, starring Carla Gugino as a wife handcuffed to a bed after her husband (Bruce Greenwood) suddenly passes during a sexual encounter.
Screenwriter and director Zak Hilditch fully embraces the impossibly grim and bleak worldview present in King’s story, making for a movie that can be unpleasant but which is beautifully made and leans into the “horror” side of being a horror movie.
First, there was 1922 (from the story in Full Dark, No Stars), starring an unrecognizably emaciated Thomas Jane as a man who enlists his son into helping with a murder and then experiences a long, slow, rot of the soul in its wake. Netflix gave us two stellar feature film adaptations of King’s work. Mercedes, starring a perfectly-cast Brendan Gleeson as retired detective Bill Hodges, the hero of three of King’s most recent novels. In addition to Sleeping Beauties, a new novel that King co-wrote with his son Owen, there was the TV series adaption of Mr. Stephen King: 2017 was one of the best years to be a Stephen King fan I can remember in my lifetime, and I say this as someone who has been a Constant Reader since middle school. Here, in no real order, are some of my favorites in horror for 2017: Movies like Get Out, The Shape of Water, and Raw are absolutely among my favorites of the year, but because I’ve talked about them elsewhere and they’ve previously been covered by my brilliant colleagues here at Daily Dead, I’ll try to focus on some other picks instead. Theatrical horror killed it like never before, the indie scene remains vital and strong, horror TV is bigger than ever, and cult and boutique video labels continue putting out gorgeous Blu-rays of gem after gem. I wasn’t sure where to even start making a list of favorites for 2017.
This past year was simply too good for horror fans.