Annie Wilkes- Misery
Kathy Bates’ genuinely unsettling, faintly comic performance as lonely nurse Annie Wilkes earned her an Oscar in 1990, and her transformation from life-saving carer to deluded torturer still curdles the blood to this day. When famed novelist Paul Sheldon crashes his car and injures himself in the middle of nowhere, the cheerily disturbed Ms. Wilkes takes him in and begins to nurse him back to health. But it turns out that she’s a bit of a fan of Sheldon’s characters and is not best pleased on discovering he’s about to kill one of them off. The film descends into a psychotic love story and what starts as unnerving hospitality eventually grows into a terrifying, unpredictable rage, culminating in the infamous “hobbling” scene. It might take a few minutes to get onto your feet after this one.
Psycho-babble: “I am your number one fan. There is nothing to worry about. You are going to be just fine. I am your number one fan.”
