Best Movies of Stephen King
AMC Movie List

Best Movies of Stephen King

He's a best-selling writer, but not all Stephen King-inspired movies are classics. Which adaptation ranks the highest?

rank title points votes your vote
1 The Shawshank Redemption
King in "triumph of the human spirit" mode, with great performances by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. 1960 3566
2 Pet Sematary
King made a humorous nineteenth-century folk song chilling in this tale of two parents' hope in resurrected their dead child. 1851 3607
3 Misery
Kathy Bates got an Oscar for her role as the scariest fan ever in this cautionary tale about the price of fame. 1693 3237
4 Salem's Lot
Tobe Hooper's adaptation of this modern-day vampire story scared the bejesus out of a generation of TV-movie viewers. 1630 3240
5 The Green Mile
Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan shine in this tale about the unlikely friendship between a death-row inmate and a guard. 1615 3307
6 Stand by Me
Doesn't seem like a King adaptation -- until you count the corpse, the projectile vomit, and Kiefer Sutherland's scary teen. 1572 2954
7 The Stand
In the epic novel and mini-series, King's postapocalyptic vision of the future pits fundamental good against ultimate evil. 1446 3312
8 The Dead Zone
Christopher Walken's earnest performance and David Cronenberg's out-there directorial style perfectly fit King's material. 1383 2881
9 The Shining
Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of King's novel about a haunted hotel is a high-water mark in classy horror. 1210 4180
10 Creepshow
George A. Romero directed this King screenplay, which pays homage to the lurid horror comics of the fifties. 1152 3040
11 Stephen King's The Mist
A small town is held hostage by a freakish fog cloud that's carrying within itself murderous creatures. 1103 2181
12 Carrie
In this movie based on King's first novel, Sissy Spacek won an Oscar for playing a downtrodden teen with superpowers. 683 3501
13 Rose Red
King adapted his own novel -- a twisted variation on The Haunting -- for this television mini-series. 543 2647
14 The Dark Half
A novelist and his alter ego fight for dominance in this self-referential parable starring Timothy Hutton. 419 2587
15 Maximum Overdrive
This spectacle in kitsch, in which machines come alive, is memorable for its absurd wink-and-a-nod humor. 305 2379
16 Cat's Eye
Several stories wind together, including a memorable one starring a young Drew Barrymore as a girl fighting a goblin. 264 2230
17 Christine
A Plymouth Fury comes to life and begins to control the life of its owner by seeking out and mowing down his enemies. 198 3172
18 Children of the Corn
A city couple stumbles across the dark side of America's heartland in this paranoid thriller based on a King short story. 15 3145
19 The Running Man
In 2019, the government uses reality TV to control the populace in this futuristic thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. -199 2645
20 Sleepwalkers
As an homage to fifties drive-in horror flicks, Sleepwalkers works brilliantly with scary soul-eating monsters. -350 2120