Stephen King's Best Adaptation Deserves More Than Its 98% Rotten Tomatoes Score

Published Sep 3, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep." Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. When a Stephen King movie adaptation gets it right, it can often become one of the greatest movies of all time, and yet at 98%, even King's best adaptation still does not have a high enough Rotten Tomatoes score. Stephen King has a surprisingly low box office record, with a catastrophic Dark Tower for every Misery, and part of this may be due to one major trend in his works. Many of Stephen King's best books feel unadaptable as they tend to feature long internal monologs and deep psychological struggles. Still, the right team can create a masterpiece. While Stephen King and Mike Flanagan now make a formidable creative team, with Flanagan being responsible for some of the best King adaptations of the past ten years, one much older movie still beats any of their projects in terms of storytelling, character development, and shock factor. The Shawshank Redemption follows a man falsely accused of murder and thrust into the brutal world of an overcrowded prison, where one thing keeps him alive. The movie is just as haunting as any horror story, despite being based on a rare non-horror Stephen King book. The Shawshank Redemption Has A 98% Audience Score, But Deserves 100% Despite being one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made and attracting high praise from Roger Ebert, who said in a review that "it plays more like a spiritual experience than a movie," The Shawshank Redemption was not a box-office success until it became available in home video format. Even so, it never achieved the critical acclaim it deserved, with Rotten Tomatoes critics giving the movie an 89% positive rating, while much more impressed audiences have given it a 98% positive score. And yet, The Shawshank Redemption deserves more. A reason it is hard to watch The Shawshank Redemption today is the fact that it has been referenced so much that many viewers know the twist, but this is a testament to the movie's influence and impact. That said, other criticisms deserve more consideration. One of the main points highlighted by critics of the movie is the way it simplifies the characters, dividing them into "good" and "bad" boxes, without the opportunity for complexity or antiheroes. Still, this would only be a negative point if the story was attempting to present characters as morally complex, which it is not. In 1995, The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Instead, The Shawshank Redemption is a story about hope, to the point that this feeling resembles a main character for its near-constant presence. There is no need for an antihero or a complicated moral journey, as we already know that Andy Dufresne is innocent. This leaves room to focus on Andy and Red's journeys as well as the jaw-dropping twist, which still holds up today. The movie's legacy alone should earn it a higher score, but the fact that it is a faultless, if unusual, adaptation should have given The Shawshank Redemption a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Shawshank Redemption Is Unusual For A Stephen King Adaptation Before some highly successful adaptations, like Arcane and Fallout, started adhering to the spirit of the source material rather than copying the story exactly, the best formula for a great adaptation was usually considered to be strictly following the source material. While capturing the tone and main plot points, The Shawshank Redemption movie made some changes to Stephen King's book. Most of these changes involve giving the characters more extreme fates, like Brooks' suicide and Tommy's murder, but because the overall movie has a slower and more thoughtful pace, these changes work. Even so, the factor that makes The Shawshank Redemption stand out among Stephen King adaptations is the subject matter. There are very few Stephen King stories that contain no supernatural or horror elements at all, and The Shawshank Redemption is one of these. That said, the movie captures a horror tone through moments like Brooks' despair and the repeated and brutal attacks Andy suffers. Stephen King shines at turning a simple moment into nightmare fuel, and the adaptation sticks with viewers more than any other, from Andy's first night in prison to his claustrophobic and unbearably tense crawl to freedom. Source: Roger Ebert Release Date September 23, 1994 Runtime 142 minutes Director Frank Darabont Cast Tim Robbins Andy Dufresne Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman star in Frank Darabont's 1994 adaptation of Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. After being sentenced to life in prison for the alleged murder of his wife, Robbins' Andy Dufresne learns the value of hope, persistence, and true friendship as he befriends kindhearted convicts like Freeman's "Red" Redding and uses his wits to expose the secret crimes of Bob Gunton's cruel penitentiary warden Samuel Norton.