10 Horror Movie Directors That Quit The Genre
8. Rob Reiner (Misery)
One of the best adaptations of horror literature's crown prince Stephen King, 1990's Misery has stiff competition for that honour from the likes of It (well, Chapter One anyway) and The Shining. And that's without even mentioning Secret Window. Which no one ever should.
Featuring one of cinema's most mesmerising turns in the form of future Dolores Claiborne star Kathy Bates' incomparable work as Annie Wilkes, this sparse and ingenious story sees an injured writer rehabilitated in a remote farm house by his biggest fan, only for her to turn sour (and divert his path to recovery painfully) when she learns of his new novel's ending.
Essentially an unbearably tense two-hander between James Caan's coolly detached anti-hero and Bates' volatile anti-villain, this taut chamber piece is a horror masterpiece which shows how little a talented director needs to build tension. The denouement manages to make a single cigarette and a typewriter more viscerally impactful than a lot of bigger film's action-packed climaxes could dream of.
Bizarrely, the film came from one Rob Reiner, a talented comedy and drama director whose name you may recognise from the likes of When Harry Met Sally, This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, and even the earlier Stephen King adaptation Stand By Me.