My favourite thing about this movie was the symbolism between metaphorically being enslaved by your fans and by your book that you’re writing versus the literal enslavement by a fan to write your book.

Misery follows a writer called Paul who has been writing a book series called Misery for quite some time, but he wants to be able to branch out from that book series because he just doesn’t enjoy it anymore. One day he gets into a car wreck and his ‘number one fan’ Annie saves him from hypothermia and is able to nurse him back to health in her home as she is a nurse.

She gets to read the final Misery book as it comes out when Paul is still in her care and she is not happy at the ending. She makes Paul write another one to make up for the disappointment that she felt with this one.

Now this is where the symbolism of the metaphorical entrapment versus the literal entrapment begins. Paul has always felt like he has been trapped by Misery, people want him to write Misery and that’s all he’s known for, so he wants to branch out but his fans obviously do not want Misery to end. He is metaphorically trapped in this world of Misery literally by his fans who want it to continue, and now because of his injuries from the car wreck, he is literally in trapped in this woman’s house who is forcing him to write another Misery book to right the wrong that he has put in this one. It’s very clever and I really enjoyed it.

Then slowly things about Annie come out including the fact that she is an angel of death who has killed many infants in her time of being a nurse, she clearly has a lot of issues with herself, and is very religious which brings a lot of issues as well. Slowly over time Paul realises if he doesn’t get out soon he will never get out at all.

I really enjoyed this movie, it was a slow burn and took a bit of time to get to where it was going but when it did it was really fantastic. When Annie killed the sheriff of the town I audibly gasped because I didn’t expect that to happen, and the symmetry between Paul being trapped by the book series versus him being trapped by the fans of the the book series was really fun too. I just feel there is a lot of layers to this film and it’s one that you have to watch and really digest and get your teeth into to understand every little layer, and I really like that about films.

Misery is definitely a film I would recommend people watch, however it is quite gory and does have some very memorable scenes that you will want to quickly forget…so if you don’t handle gore very well I would recommend you tread cautiously with this film. But if you love films that are a slow burn and have you thinking about each moment and slowly peeling back the layers of it then it’s one that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

What do you think of Misery?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding