Best Stephen King Movies, Ranked: Top 10 Adaptations — Carrie Beats Shawshank and The Shining Barely Makes the Top 10

Twelve days before Halloween, a data-ranked look at the ten best-reviewed King films: Tomatometer and Metascore averaged, 17 titles scored, official trailers included.

Halloween is twelve days away, and Stephen King is the writer most horror fans reach for when they want something to watch. Rotten Tomatoes alone keeps a ranked list of 68 King movies, and they range from the all-time classics to titles that critics wrote off. This guide does the sorting for you: the ten best-reviewed theatrical and streaming feature adaptations of King's fiction, ranked by hard numbers rather than by a single critic's taste. Miniseries and TV movies are left out.

How this list works: each film's FilmRated score is the average of its Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and its Metacritic Metascore, both checked on October 19, 2026, with halves rounded up. Ties are broken by the higher Metascore. We scored 17 adaptations in total, starting from the top of Rotten Tomatoes' own King ranking. The seven that missed the cut were Dolores Claiborne (75, losing the tie for tenth place on Metascore), The Life of Chuck (74), 1408 (72), The Green Mile (70), The Monkey (70), Doctor Sleep (69) and the 2025 Running Man (59). Titles below a 75% Tomatometer on that ranking, such as The Mist, Christine and Cujo, were not scored. The scores come from the aggregators' own pages, and they move a little over time.

10. The Shining. FilmRated score 75 (Rotten Tomatoes 82%, Metacritic 68). The most famous King adaptation is also the one critics rate lowest on this list: its Metascore is the lowest of the ten. Stanley Kubrick directed and co-wrote it with novelist Diane Johnson, with Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers in the cast, and Warner Bros. released it on May 23, 1980. It was shot at EMI Elstree Studios in England between May 1978 and April 1979, using the then-new Steadicam for several of its most famous scenes.

The film cost $19 million and took about $57 million, and its first reviews were mixed. It earned two Golden Raspberry nominations in 1981, for Worst Director and Worst Actress, and the Worst Actress nomination was rescinded in 2022. King himself disliked it for departing from his novel, and he later produced a 1997 miniseries that stayed closer to the book. Time has reversed the verdict: the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2018, and the 2019 sequel Doctor Sleep scored 79% and 59 on the same two sites. Today's scores are strong but not at the very top. For many viewers, the argument is whether a film can be this much of an event and still be a loose adaptation.

9. It. FilmRated score 77 (Rotten Tomatoes 85%, Metacritic 69). Andy Muschietti's 2017 film adapts the first half of King's 1986 novel: seven children in Derry, Maine, in the 1980s, and the shape-shifting clown who hunts them. Bill Skarsgard plays Pennywise, opposite Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis and Jaeden Lieberher, and New Line made it for $35 million to $40 million. Cary Joji Fukunaga was the original director and left in 2015, and Will Poulter, first cast as the clown, dropped out over scheduling.

It opened on September 8, 2017, and grossed about $719.8 million worldwide including re-releases, which makes it the highest-grossing horror film of all time before adjusting for inflation. It sold more tickets than any other film on this list, and it is here because the reviews were good too. The critics were warm rather than ecstatic, and the Metascore of 69 shows it. The on-screen title is It Chapter One, and the sequel, It Chapter Two (2019), did not repeat the success, scoring 62% on Rotten Tomatoes.

8. The Dead Zone. FilmRated score 79 (Rotten Tomatoes 89%, Metacritic 69). David Cronenberg's 1983 film stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, a schoolteacher who wakes from a five-year coma with the ability to see the future when he touches people. Jeffrey Boam wrote the script from King's 1979 novel, and the cast includes Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen, Herbert Lom, Tom Skerritt and Colleen Dewhurst. Paramount released it on October 21, 1983, and it grossed $20.8 million in the United States and Canada on a budget of $7.1 million to $10 million.

It is the quietest film in Cronenberg's early career. It was the first he made without a writing credit, and he turned down King's own script. Bill Murray was considered for the lead. Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and praised Walken, and the film won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. Martin Sheen is in the cast, and Walken's performance is what critics remembered. We found no studio-uploaded trailer on YouTube, so the page has no video.

7. The Long Walk. FilmRated score 80 (Rotten Tomatoes 88%, Metacritic 71). The newest film here comes from a novel King published in 1979 under the name Richard Bachman. Francis Lawrence's film, written by JT Mollner, finally opened on September 12, 2025 from Lionsgate. Fifty teenage boys walk in a televised contest in a totalitarian alternate America. They must keep up a pace of three miles an hour, and after three warnings a walker is executed. The last survivor gets a prize and a wish. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson play the two friends at its centre.

It was shot in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Manitoba from July 24 to September 12, 2024. It grossed about $63 million worldwide against a $20 million budget. Reviewers praised the performances and the cinematography, and the objections were that the premise is thin and the ending is ambiguous. Rotten Tomatoes' December 2025 ranking of King films put it first, at 88%, though its Metascore of 71 places it seventh on this list. It is the only film on this page released in the 2020s.

6. 1922. FilmRated score 81 (Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 70). Zak Hilditch wrote and directed this Netflix film, which premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 23, 2017 and came to the service on October 20. It adapts a novella from King's 2010 collection Full Dark, No Stars, and Thomas Jane plays Wilfred James, a Nebraska farmer who persuades his teenage son (Dylan Schmid) to help him murder his wife (Molly Parker) in 1922. The rest of the film is the price. It cost $5 million, runs 101 minutes, and was shot around Vancouver, with a few corn shots filmed in Australia.

The critics were close to unanimous, and Rotten Tomatoes' consensus praises Hilditch's patient storytelling and strong work from Jane. Audiences were not: its Popcornmeter is 58%, the widest gap between critics and viewers of any film here, 34 points. It ties with Misery at 81, and the Metascore of 75 against 70 is what puts Misery ahead. If you like slow-burn horror that is more about guilt than about scares, it is the most underrated film on the list.

5. Misery. FilmRated score 81 (Rotten Tomatoes 86%, Metacritic 75). Rob Reiner returned to King four years after Stand by Me with this two-person chamber piece, written by William Goldman from King's 1987 novel. James Caan is the novelist Paul Sheldon, who crashes his car in a Colorado blizzard and wakes up in the house of his self-described number-one fan, Annie Wilkes. Columbia released it on November 30, 1990, made by Castle Rock Entertainment and Nelson Entertainment for $18 million to $20 million. It grossed $61.3 million worldwide. Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen and Lauren Bacall are in support.

Kathy Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe for playing Annie, and Wikipedia notes that this makes Misery the only King-novel adaptation to have won an Oscar. Exteriors were shot in Genoa, Nevada, with the interiors on a Los Angeles soundstage, and Marc Shaiman wrote the score. A Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls it one of the best King adaptations to date, and it is hard to disagree. Most of the running time is two people in one house.

4. Stand by Me. FilmRated score 83 (Rotten Tomatoes 89%, Metacritic 76). The one film on this list with no supernatural element is the most beloved. Rob Reiner's 1986 film adapts King's 1982 novella The Body, with a screenplay by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans. Four boys in the fictional Castle Rock, Oregon, in 1959 set off along the railway tracks to find a missing boy's body. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell play them, and Kiefer Sutherland is the older bully, Ace Merrill. It runs 89 minutes.

Columbia released it on August 22, 1986. It cost $7.5 million to $8 million and grossed between $52 million and $54 million, depending on the source. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and for two Golden Globes, for Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director. The title comes from the 1961 Ben E. King song that plays over the closing credits. Most of the film was shot in Brownsville, Oregon. Its Popcornmeter score is 94%.

3. Gerald's Game. FilmRated score 84 (Rotten Tomatoes 91%, Metacritic 77). Mike Flanagan's Netflix adaptation of King's 1992 novel is almost a one-room film: Jessie (Carla Gugino) is handcuffed to a bed in a remote house after her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) dies during a game. Flanagan and Jeff Howard wrote the script. Filming began October 17, 2016, in Mobile, Alabama. It premiered at BFI Southbank on September 19, 2017 and came to Netflix on September 29, 2017.

The critics rated it 91% on Rotten Tomatoes from 81 reviews, and 77 on Metacritic from 12, and they singled out Gugino and Flanagan's direction. King, after seeing a rough cut, called it hypnotic, horrifying and terrific. The scene that people remember is Jessie breaking a glass and cutting her wrist to slip her hand free. Be warned: it is one of the hardest scenes to watch in any adaptation of his work. Audiences were less taken, with 70% on the Popcornmeter.

2. The Shawshank Redemption. FilmRated score 86 (Rotten Tomatoes 89%, Metacritic 82). Frank Darabont wrote and directed this adaptation of King's 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, from the collection Different Seasons. Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a banker sent to prison for murder, and Morgan Freeman plays Red, who narrates. Niki Marvin produced it for Castle Rock, Columbia distributed it, and it was shot mainly in Mansfield, Ohio. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 1994, and opened in the United States on September 23.

It was a box-office disappointment: $25 million to make, about $16 million in its first run and $73.3 million worldwide in total. It got seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won none. What changed its fortunes was home video. Warner Home Video shipped more than 320,000 VHS rental copies in 1995, making it the top rental of the year, and TNT began showing it regularly in 1997. The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 2015. Its Popcornmeter score is 98%, the highest audience score on the list, and its Metascore of 82 is second only to the film in first place.

1. Carrie. FilmRated score 90 (Rotten Tomatoes 94%, Metacritic 86). First place goes to the film made from King's first published novel, from 1974. Brian De Palma directed it from a script by Lawrence D. Cohen, with Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and Piper Laurie as her fanatically religious mother, Margaret. Amy Irving, William Katt, John Travolta, Nancy Allen, P. J. Soles and Betty Buckley are among the other students and teachers. United Artists released it in November 1976. It runs 98 minutes, cost about $1.8 million and took about $33.8 million.

It has the highest Tomatometer and the highest Metascore of any King film on this list, by a margin of four points over Shawshank on the Metascore, and it earned two acting nominations at the 49th Academy Awards: Spacek for Best Actress and Laurie for Best Supporting Actress. Empire ranked it 86th among the 500 greatest films in 2008, and the National Film Registry added it in 2022. The 2013 remake is a useful comparison: 51% on Rotten Tomatoes and 53 on Metacritic.

Put the ten side by side and a few patterns show up. The average Tomatometer is 88.5%, the average Metascore is 74.3 and the average FilmRated score is 81.6. Five of the ten were made before 1991 and four date from 2017 or later, with Shawshank (1994) the only film in between, so nothing from 1995 to 2016 makes the list. Two of the ten went straight to Netflix. Rob Reiner directed two of them, Stand by Me and Misery. Mike Flanagan, who made Gerald's Game, also directed two of the films we scored and left out, The Life of Chuck (74) and Doctor Sleep (69).

Which should you watch first? For Halloween night, Carrie and The Shining are the classics, and Gerald's Game is the one to pick if you want something you can start tonight on Netflix. If you want the King who is not really horror, watch Stand by Me and Shawshank back to back. For something newer, The Long Walk is the pick from the 2020s. Whichever you choose, check the trailer first: official studio uploads are embedded on each film's page.