Iconic horror author Stephen King shared his top 10 movies of all time Monday, with some notable absences that didn’t go unnoticed.
If you’re wondering, the “Carrie” author made it clear on social platform X that he was excluding some of his own adapted works, such as “Misery,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile” and “Stand by Me.”
While there seemed to be general approval of his choices, the absence of one film based on a classic King novel led to a stir in the comments.
“The best film ever is THE SHINING,” one person wrote.
Despite its legendary status in the horror genre, King has famously criticized the film adaption and even the acting job of Jack Nicholson, who played main character Jack Torrance.
In a 2016 interview with Deadline, King said:
I think ‘The Shining’ is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it. In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much.
Others took issue with King’s decision to leave all of the Star Wars films off of his list.
As for the best 10 best movies of all time according to Stephen King, the prolific author listed them as follows, in no particular order:
- “Sorcerer”
- “The Godfather Part II”
- “The Getaway”
- “Groundhog Day”
- “Casablanca”
- “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”
- “Jaws”
- “Mean Streets”
- “Close encounters of the 3rd Kind”
- “Double Indemnity”
For those who prefer King’s writing to his movie recommendations, fans of “The Stand” may enjoy the recently published “The End of the World as We Know It,” a collection of stories set in the world of the celebrated 1978 book.
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