8 Movies That Completely Ignored Important Plot Points

2. Misery - Paul's Escape Plan

Misery 1990 ending james caan kathy bates
Columbia Pictures

Rob Reiner's brilliant '90s adaptation is one of the tightest thrillers around, but it was perhaps a little too tight when it came to explaining one of the most important pieces of its puzzle.

The movie finds famous author Paul Sheldon held captive by crazy superfan Annie Wilkes, with Paul's leg injuries restricting him to a wheelchair, nullifying any chance of him overpowering Annie and mounting an escape.

After months of captivity, Paul devises a plan and manages to kill Annie by whacking her with a typewriter and having a bit of a scuffle. As you do. The camera then shows the two of them lying on the floor, Annie's corpse wedged next to Paul's exhausted - and still crippled - body.

And then, an "18 months later" card pops up, Paul is back home, and the details of his escape are never mentioned.

Misery movie 18 months later
Columbia Pictures

This is very bizarre, especially since the entire movie makes a big deal out of the fact that Annie's house is in an extremely remote location that's difficult to access, and she doesn't get many visitors. There's also an earlier scene that shows the household landline is a fake.

So basically, Paul manages to escape a snowy mountainside home without the use of his legs and without being able to contact anyone first. That seems like an important point to explain, no?

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!