12 Brilliant Recent Horror Movies That Shocked Everyone
3. Gerald's Game (2017)
Of the selection of King works available on Netflix, Gerald's Game is the most surprisingly successful - not least because it was previously believed to be unfilmable. Odd that they didn't say that about the book with a space clown that fights a giant turtle, but it's perhaps Gerald's Game's simplicity that provided potential obstacles for filmmakers.
The action predominantly takes place in a bedroom, with fed-up wife Jessie handcuffed to the bed for her husband Gerald's "game" (wink wink), only for him to suffer a fatal heart attack and leave her stranded. Isolated and with limited chances of escape, Jessie's break from reality leads to hallucinations that perhaps could have been tricky to film.
It turns out the opposite is true: Jessie's internal turmoil which manifests in figments of her imagination makes for a successful psychological horror. She's got the spirit of her dead husband, several incarnations of herself representing the different facets of her character, and the spookily deformed Midnight Man and his bag of bones to contend with. Add to that the emotional journey of self revelation which Jessie undergoes, and ends up being quite the rollercoaster.
Gerald's Game really is a simple premise, but it has been so well executed that it deserves to be known as one of the better Stephen King adaptions.