7. Riding the Bullet (2004)
When King published his 2000 novella Riding the Bullet, it was generally well-received by critics and made history as the first mass-distributed e-book. The movie follows the journey of Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson), a neurotic and depressed college student whose obsession with worst-case scenarios nearly drives him to suicide. After receiving news that his mother has had a stroke, Parker decides to hitchhike, catching a ride with the mysterious George Staub (David Arquette). Filmmaker Mick Garris has adopted Stephen King’s tales for television or film on several occasions, but his 2004 take on Riding the Bullet is mediocre at best. Skip this one, or you’ll find yourself—like Parker—begging to be let off of a ponderous and boring ride.
8. Dreamcatcher (2003)
King’s 2001 novel Dreamcatcher was admittedly not one of the author’s favorites. It was written in 1999, when he was “using a lot of Oxycontin” while convalescing after being hit by a car. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that Lawrence Kasdan’s 2003 film adaptation of the book is among the worst. The movie follows four lifelong friends—who have psychic powers—on a winter hunting trip to upstate Maine. They soon find themselves caught between invading aliens and the U.S. military forces trying to contain them.
Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, and Jason Lee do fine work as the friends, but Morgan Freeman falls flat as an overzealous commander with ridiculously distracting eyebrows. Kasdan gave us an overly long, free-associating mess of a movie—one that could have done much better if he’d just picked a tone and stuck with it.
9. The Lawnmower Man (1992)
If you’re a fan of this short story from King’s 1978 collection Night Shift, don’t be fooled by Brett Leonard’s 1992 film The Lawnmower Man—it’s an adaptation in name only. Other than the title (which was originally Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man) and a single scene, the movie bears little resemblance to the source material. King even ended up suing New Line Cinema over the film, forcing them to remove his name from the title. Instead of a nutty little tale about a lawn mowing service gone horribly wrong, the film steals from Flowers for Algernon and Frankenstein for its mishmash plot, which centers on a doctor (Pierce Brosnan) who chooses a mentally impaired greenskeeper (Jeff Fahey) to be the subject of his experiments in intelligence-boosting via virtual reality and a drug cocktail. Follow King’s lead on this one, and give the hackneyed story of The Lawnmower Man a hard pass.