Credit: Netflix

Say Stephen King, and most people immediately know what they are dealing with, or, as they say, the name carries weight.

You need not have read a page of his work to recognise what he writes. His first published story appeared in 1967, and he has been playing with America’s, nay, the world’s worst fears ever since. Not bad for a name on a book cover, right?

His first novel, Carrie, arrived in 1974, and what a debut! Filmmakers took one look and threw themselves at it. That is the Stephen King appeal: he makes you invest in the person first, then gives that person something dreadful to survive. Mean? Yes. Effective? Yes. Scary? Hell yeah.

Stephen King is not just a horror writer; he writes about grief, addiction, childhood and death, while the supernatural slips into fractures that were already there.

Netflix has returned to his catalogue more than once, so tell us: how many adaptations have you ignored? Consider this your intervention. Go on, take a look at these binge-worthy picks.

Four Stephen King book adaptations to binge on Netflix

Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

People spent years calling Gerald’s Game “unfilmable”, but all this time, they were waiting for Mike Flanagan to come along and take over the job, and nobody could’ve done better. But to defend the lot, you can see why everyone was nervous, because who wouldn’t be?

Jessie Burlingame is handcuffed to a bed in an isolated lake house when her husband, Gerald, drops dead beside her, and there is no escape hatch, not even a neighbour. Just Jessie and a corpse and a situation that gets more horrifying by the minute.

Stephen King saw a rough cut of Gerald’s Game before release and called it “horrifying, hypnotic, terrific”, adding that it would freak viewers out. And, if Stephen King tells you something is going to freak you out, you pay attention. Flanagan pulled off what everyone thought was impossible, and the result is claustrophobic and hard to shake. So if you haven’t watched a choking thriller in a while, this might be your first stop.

Mr Harrigan’s Phone (John Lee Hancock, 2022)

Here, we are dealing with a dead billionaire texting from beyond the grave, and that already sounds like Stephen King must have been having a very good day when he thought of it, but Mr Harrigan’s Phone begins somewhere much more normal, with Craig reading books to John Harrigan and building a friendship with him.

Then Harrigan dies, and Craig slips an iPhone into his coffin. The script flips when messages start arriving from a number that should be very, very out of service.

The film comes from King’s 2020 novella in If It Bleeds, with Jaeden Martell as Craig and Donald Sutherland bringing a chill to Harrigan. King had script and actor approval on the project and said Sutherland was “just right”. He was impressed by the finished film too, calling a near-complete cut “nothing short of brilliant”.

1922 (Zak Hilditch, 2017)

Yup, no smartphones here as we travel back to 1922 on a Nebraska farm where our protagonist, Wilfred James, decides that murdering his wife, Arlette, is preferable to losing the family land. But since it’s Stephen King, it can’t be that simple.

Things take a turn when he involves his own son in the plan. So no, there is no mystery about who did what. It’s the horror that comes from watching Wilfred’s crime eat through the life he was so desperate to protect. Was the land worth it? Well, you can guess how that goes.

The film adapts King’s novella from his 2010 collection Full Dark, No Stars, with Zak Hilditch directing the whole miserable business. Even King admitted he was surprised anyone wanted to film it because the material was so harsh, then compared the result to There Will Be Blood and said it would not leave his mind.

In the Tall Grass (Vincenzo Natali, 2019)

Do not take this lightly because King’s In the Tall Grass turns a field into a nightmare that you won’t be able to forget for days, and will make you think twice before entering a freshly mown lawn.

Pregnant Becky and her brother Cal hear a boy calling for help from a field beside a Kansas road and then realise distance has stopped playing by the rules. People who sound close are nowhere near, and the road feels out of reach. But the fresh hell is getting out, which seems impossible. You thought grass was harmless? Cute.

King wrote the novella with his son Joe Hill, which is one hell of a horror-family fact, and it first appeared in Esquire in 2012. Netflix’s film, directed by Vincenzo Natali, stars Laysla De Oliveira and Patrick Wilson and adds a time-loop element that the original story does not have, so readers do not get a carbon copy, but the grass still wants everyone dead.