When I first pitched this idea to my mom she sent my a flurry of text messages rating everything she’d ever watched. For hours my phone buzzed with the rapid-fire lists of random movies, TV shows, all complete with various ratings and a little blurb about how she felt about each one— always followed shortly by, “But I don’t know how to review things”.
The last messages she sent was a list of her favorite movies:
Shawshank Redemption, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Shining, and Misery.
Followed by two hours later Silence of the Lambs. Had to get that one in, too. God forbid we don’t know her taste.
I sat with this list for a while, I knew there was a common thread but I struggled to pinpoint it. I’d seen all these movies a billion and one times with her, I was even the one to show her Misery because of how much I love Kathy Bates. But what was it about this list that is so… familiar?
Horror? Sure. Drama? Definitely a theme… Nothing recent whatsoever? I’m not surprised. But what else is there?
Have you connected the dots yet?
Apologies to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Silence of the Lambs, but they’re taking the backseat for my realization and think piece on my mom’s favorite person in the world: Stephen King.
Stephen King has had a grip on my family for as long as I can remember. Growing up if my mom wasn’t making me watch one of the many renditions of Children of the Corn, it was my grandfather making me watch Stand by Me as he reminisced about his youth. Or my brother hyping up Cell as it was part of his conspiracy theory agenda. Even my dating like wasn’t exempt from this bizarre trend as I somehow ended up seeing IT on a first date once.
To say King has shaped my movie-watching habits would be a massive understatement at this point.
When I came to this revelation of my mom’s ( and apparently everyone else in my family ) obsession with King I pointed it out to her and here’s all she had to say,
“Uhh, I like Stephen King a lot— you know what also add The Stand in there because that’s a great one too. Yeah Stephen King is the best— his books are way better but they’re always better”.
Then came a fun fact: “He’s in so many of his movies did you know that”. An Alfred Hitchcock of our time.
And that’s where I cut her off— because this isn’t about books. This is about movies. And besides, pulling anything else out of my mom would be like pulling teeth.
You’ll learn who’s the yapper of the two of us very fast.
But how do I feel about Stephen King? You’re here to be force fed to my thoughts the same way I’ve been stuck watching horror movies on loop. And for someone who hasn’t read any of his books but been subjected to every movie and mini series based off of his books to ever hit made-for-TV status?
Well, I can’t lie… I think they’re pretty great.
I made sure to point out that I was the one to introduce my mom to Misery because I loved the suspense. But then I thought to myself, “Okay, that has to be it. There can’t be other Stephen King movies I rave about”.
Loud buzzer noise. Wrong.
In a short list here were the one’s I remembered off the top of my head.
Carrie ( both versions ), The Life of Chuck, 1922, The Green Mile, 1408, and also Shawshank Redemption.
Even my top-played song on Spotify is IT Is The End by Ice Nine Kills—a song based on IT.
At this point, I’m convinced there’s more movies I love that secretly trace back to King. And this second realization led me down a rabbit hole— not just how his work has shaped my family’s taste, but how it has shaped horror media as a while.
Because Stephen King isn’t just a name in horror—he’s the name in horror. His influence stretch far beyond just books and have infiltrated all ends of pop media, inspiring countless directors to make both the best and the worst movies I’ve ever seen. His ability to take something as mundane as small towns and the corner of your closet that’s just a little too dark into a nightmarish reality has been branded into by brain that still leaves my terrified of sewer grates and I run up the stairs a little faster after I turn off the lights at night.
From the slow building dread of Gerald’s Game to the claustrophobic terror of Doctor Sleep, his stories have been adapted and reimagined in every single way possible. And even if some of those miss the mark ( so sorry to all The Dark Tower fans out there ), it would be stupid to deny his impact.
So when I posed the question, How has Stephen King influenced me— the real question has always been, How hasn’t he? Somehow, he’s managed to get his hands on nearly everything I enjoy.
His stories have shaped horror, cinema, and how I experience real life fear. And as much as I’d like to think I’m a free thinker and my taste are my own, maybe I’ve just been living in Stephen King’s world all along.
Maybe you have too.