Rob Reiner's Oscar-Winning Stephen King Horror Movie Is A Streaming Hit On HBO Max

The absolutely devastating loss of director Rob Reiner, who died at the age of 78 in December 2025, has inspired quite a few people to go back and watch (or rewatch) his incredible body of work. The man behind some of the most heartfelt and nostalgia-worthy films of the 1980s and 1990s also directed "Misery," one of the most terrifying Stephen King adaptations, and it's been dominating the HBO Max streaming charts. 

Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as obsessed superfan Annie Wilkes, who kidnaps the author of her favorite book series, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), and forces him to write another book in the series after learning he plans on killing off the main character, Misery. When Paul doesn't do what she asks and tries to escape, Annie gets creative and finds some pretty horrifying ways to keep him captive and unable to leave. (In fact, the scene where she does this was so gruesome the first director bailed on the project, allowing Reiner to step in.) 

While Reiner movies like "The Princess Bride" and "When Harry Met Sally" might be a bit more comforting, classics are classics for a reason, and "Misery" is absolutely an all-timer. 

Horror author Stephen King has had a pretty prolific career, and quite a few of his short stories and novels have been turned into feature films, but "Misery" is truly one of the best. King himself has a lot of love for the film version of "Misery," noting that Bates and Caan both made it "magic" and that it had humor the book didn't have — which helped break up the, you know, misery. It's a brilliant adaptation that takes one of King's best books and makes it even better, compounding the author's own fears and experiences with overzealous fans and making them relatable to everyone, even if you're not a world-famous author. 

Maybe it's a mix of remembering Reiner and the fact that many of us are trapped indoors right now because of winter weather, which is its own kind of hostage situation with Mother Earth, but "Misery" is having a moment on HBO Max, and that rules. It's a claustrophobic thriller with some phenomenal performances and one of the gnarliest single moments in movie history where we only see a moment of actual violence. "Misery" may not be as epic and expansive as "The Shining" or as supernaturally terrifying as something like "It," but it's pure Stephen King, and Rob Reiner knew exactly how to deliver the goods.