Riding the bullet (2006).

[Neville]

Nearly unwatchable. Mick Garris turns the quite straightforward horror tale by Stephen king into a festival of false scares and often breaks the narrative to show "alternate" takes from inside the main character's mind, a game that gets old just aftert 10 minutes. It doesn't help that, as it has become a habit in modern King adaptations, King-isms that work on paper but not on film are kept, or that the performances of the negative characters turn into camp after mere seconds.

Could be worse, of course, this one only lasts 90 minutes and Stephen King himselft has a quite funny cameo.

[Ash]

I have read the short story in the book Everything's Eventual and I agree that the movie was awful.
I didn't even make it through the first half hour.
I shut it off...not wanting the original story I'd read be trampled by this filmmaking travesty.

[Shadowphile]

Can you say 'The Mangler'?

[LH-C]

For a cable tv-movie, I actually like it. Tons better than most of the crap that's on SciFi.

[Joe the Destroyer]

Personally, I liked the movie, but I haven't read the story.  I do agree that the King-isms can be a bit much.  Even still, they could have done so much worse.  As LH-C said, better than most of the crap on Sci Fi.

[Shadow]

I read the story and wondered how they could possibly adapt it for film. I have never bothered to see the movie, as I figured the story was shot to hell in order to stretch it over 90 minutes.

[Neville]

The problem with King-isms is that they do work on writing, it's King's way of saying "This is real. This is happening" while dreadful things happen, but in film they are just disruptive. They used to be deleted or replaced, but it looks like today King has more influence on the adaptations and won't allow it.

[Ash]

I recently went and re-read Riding the Bullet.
Now that I think about it and have read it twice, I'd have to say that the story itself isn't all that good to begin with.
It's definitely one of King's weaker efforts...though he might not think so as it was written with his own mother in mind.

I've read a ton of King's full length novels and short stories and this one ranks low on the scale for me.

So I guess that it was only natural that the movie stunk to high Heaven.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I am a huge King fan but have not read this story.  I also have not seen the film, due to the fact that I try to stay away from anything that Mick Garris has done.  I wonder if Garris doesn't have some type of blackmail on King.  That's the only reason I can think of why Garris keeps getting the job of directing terrible adaptations.