In order to wind up as one of Stephen King’s favorite films of the year, all a movie needs to do is be seen by Stephen King. The legendary horror author recently revealed his top ten to Entertainment Weekly, and his choices are bound to scare any serious movie lover into, well, deciding against ever going to the movies with Stephen King. EW should hobble the novelist for handing in something like this and make him start all over again.
His top choices seem appropriate (if only a smidge fanboy-ish), as King picked The Dark Knight for his number one spot (calling it “the best superhero movie ever”). From there he strings together three more fan favorites – Slumdog Millionaire, WALL-E and Tropic Thunder — before launching a Hail Mary at the 2008 movie slate to see what sticks (or should we say, sucks?).
For his fifth spot, King picked the critically-panned Funny Games remake before moving onto a little-seen dud called The Bank Job (6) and then over to the big-screen mess that was Lakeview Terrace (7) — in which King thought Samuel L. Jackson deserved an Academy Award nomination for his performance. Seriously. Talk about freakishly frightening, the author rounded out his top ten with The Ruins (8), Redbelt (9) and, finally, Death Race — making that two crappy Jason Statham movies on one top ten list!
This sort of shoddy showing is nothing new for King, who’s known for going against the grain when it comes to his favorite movies. For example, in 2006, the man poured way more love onto Snakes on a Plane and Waist Deep than either film deserved. However, come to think of it, should we expect anything less from a man who’s made quite a fine living creeping us out?