Why Secret Window Doesn’t Get More Credit (From Stephen King Fans)

The 2004 psychological thriller Secret Window doesn’t get enough credit from thriller and horror movie fans, despite being based on a novella by genre master Stephen King. The movie, starring Johnny Depp at his peak—a year after his success with the first Pirates of the Caribbean entrant—deserves more fanfare. For one, it boasts an incredible cast; in addition to Depp, the film stars John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, Len Cariou, and Charles S. Dutton.

In Secret Window, Mort Rainey (Depp), whose marriage is failing, isolates himself in a house in the woods to write. One day, a man named John Shooter (Turturro) arrives, accusing Mort of plagiarism. Mort reads Shooter’s short story and indeed finds that it’s identical to his own, except for the ending, in which the narrator kills his wife. Shooter returns again and again, demanding Mort for proof that he didn’t plagiarize, threatening him, and killing his dog. The whole time, we are on Mort’s side as we see him deal with paranoia and terror. In the end, though, it’s found that Shooter doesn’t exist at all, but has been a figment of Mort’s imagination the whole time. When Shooter killed the dog—and earlier, killed a private investigator and a neighbor and committed arson—it was actually Mort’s doing. Eventually, Mort kills his own wife, as the end of Shooter’s manuscript predicted.

As the plot description shows, Secret Window expertly utilizes an unreliable narrator approach—which can easily become a trope if not done properly. It succeeds with the task, shocking audiences with its twist ending. Other movies that did a good job with an unreliable narrator spin include Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, and Shutter Island. Secret Window also succeeds with its visual effects, like when Rainey dreams his house is cracking in half. Additionally, the movie contains classic King elements—centering on a lone author struggling with writer’s block, the story is Misery-esque.

Why Stephen King Fans Don’t Give Secret Window Enough Credit

Despite these strong elements, Secret Window has had a lackluster response from viewers. One reason for this might be because the novella it was based on—titled Secret Window, Secret Garden, part of King’s Four Past Midnight collection published in 1990—wasn’t very popular. Critics were largely unimpressed by the collection, and EW reported that the Secret Window story specifically was “gimmicky.” Readers didn’t seem to flock to the store for this collection, more interested in King’s novels; the same year, The Stand had come out, and The Dark Half was published a year earlier.

Additionally, the 2004 release of Secret Window might have been humdrum as the previous year, Stephen King’sDreamcatcher bombed at the box office. What’s more, the movie’s marketing campaign was an overall dull affair, and audiences might not have understood that the film was was, indeed, an adaptation of a King story. Many  viewers ended up finding the movie predictable or disappointing; as Common Sense Media reported, “It all feels recycled and recycled.” Others said it wasn’t meant for a film adaption, as so much of the novella happens inside of Mort’s head.

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