Analyzing Evil: Annie Wilkes From Misery

welcome everyone to the seventh episode of analyzing evil in this video we'll be going over yet another villainous nurse annie wilks from the film misery based on the novel of the same name by stephen king though annie shares the villainous nurse moniker with nurse ratched the two couldn't be further apart in their motives and actions whereas ratchet has a more subtle evil attached to her character annie is far from subtle when it comes to carrying out her machinations annie along with her compatriot ratched is considered one of the greatest villains in cinema history what makes this villain all the more sinister and terrifying for viewers is the reality that anyone could have their very own annie wilks lurking in the shadows stalkers come in all shapes and sizes and have many different motivations that could lead them to acting in much the same way that annie does in the film any villain that can invoke a sense of fear into your everyday life is a terrifying character indeed the novel is a great read and the book itself does an amazing job of instilling this fear into the reader but kathy bates performance in the film brings it just that much more to life and offers us a bevy of horrifying actions and details to keep us up at night without further ado let's explore the inner workings of the character and dive into the stomach churning madness of annie wilks our lovely annie wilkes starts out about as innocent as a person can get her clothes her hair her mannerisms her home are all old-fashioned warm and inviting she seems to be a kind nurturing and caring woman who just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills to be able to help poor paul recover from his car wreck these traits along with her soft voice and cherry disposition the gentle way she dabs his forehead or how she lifts his head to help him drink his water when he's taking his pills are all indicators that annie is an all-around pleasant and inoffensive person this annie is always present throughout the entire film but her dark side quickly overshadows all of these redeeming qualities we'll get to that site in a moment first we need to make a few assumptions about her early life and explore this innocent and prudish nature of hers to better understand the twisted person she has developed into while we have little exposure to annie's parents or childhood we can make a few inferences about her upbringing or early influences from her lifestyle and beliefs to start annie is clearly religious and whether she was raised to be religious or came to find god in her own way throughout her life is unknown but her faith does have a heavy impact on her life referring to god in many different parts of the film and using her connection to him as some of the reasonings behind her motivations another key trait of annie's is her innocent and prudish behavior that we can attribute to either her upbringing her religious beliefs a combination of the two or even her own personal preferences when it comes to speech the way she dresses and the way she conducts herself earlier i mentioned that annie initially comes off as a very kind and caring person and these traits also ring true in her chosen profession as a nurse i could be wrong but anyone who decides to take a career in the medical field generally has some desire within them to help and care for people but when the person who carries these traits is someone like annie wilks they can be twisted to serve as justifications for the horrifying actions they take now that we've gone over the good qualities annie has let's see how they tie into her darkness and help craft her into the villain she is let's start with her obsessiveness she initially states that she is paul's number one fan and has such an unhealthy obsession with paul and the misery character he's created that she even goes so far as to build a sort of shrine to him in her home and stalks him at the hotel he's staying at in a scene in the later part of the film when she's speaking to buster she reveals her extensive knowledge of paul citing facts about him that could be innocent knowledge to have about an idol in your average person but shows how much thought and attention annie has put into gathering all the information she possibly can about paul annie is also seemingly well educated as a nurse has to be but also very naive and almost childlike we can attribute this to her life in a small isolated world in the mountains of colorado her prude lifestyle and her religious views now these traits certainly don't always make a person naive but in the case of annie i believe she's crafted a world of her own where the only things that are valid are what she believes to be important and anything that doesn't coincide with this world is either purposefully or purposely ignored for the benefits of keeping her world just the way she likes it we can see an example of this naivete when she refers to michelangelo by a slur when she's telling paul that misery's child in the sistine chapel are the only two divine things in the world though she remains relatively calm she has extreme anger issues and absolutely abhors being challenged in any way throwing terrible tantrums whenever even the slightest thing displeases her while her obsessions and her naivete are troubling and a bit creepy to start these bouts of anger are violent and are our first real view into the dark part of annie's psyche this anger is quick to ignite and manifests mostly when her preconceived worldview or her expectations are thrown into any sort of disarray such as when paul challenges her on the swearing he uses in his new book or when she learns misery is killed off in misery's child there are a few more traits we'll be exploring later on but initially these traits are definitely her most troubling and show themselves repeatedly throughout the film each one growing more and more concerning as the story pans out annie is also a lonely person which may be by her own design though perhaps all of these troubling traits can be seen as reasons why annie doesn't have much of a connection to the outside world she's certainly capable of being amiable and friendly towards others but other than the husband that left her that she mentions a few times throughout the film we don't see or hear her speak of any real relationships with people other than those of fiction the latter half of the film gives us insight into perhaps the most important part of annie's psyche her cruelty and her willingness to use extreme and sadistic methods to get whatever she wants in the beginning we don't see much of this bits of it only showing when her anger rises but then we're treated to a look into her scrapbook where it's revealed that annie is in fact a serial killer and has a long record of murder under her belt it's revealed to us that annie started killing at a young age the first clipping in her scrapbook states that her father died from falling down the stairs when she was only 11 years old now for a split second you may think that annie was just a witness to an unfortunate accident but on the next page we find that the top nurse at her college met her own end in the very same way indicating that annie was responsible for both of these deaths it's unknown why she killed her father but we see in the scrapbook that once the top nursing student died annie replaced her at the top and graduated summa [ __ ] laude from her university the next two murders recorded in her scrapbook are the deaths of a high school coach and a used car salesman during her time as the head of the intensive care unit at her hospital what an odd coincidence the next murder she commits is in service of furthering her own goals just as killing the top student at her school had been we see that the head pediatrician at the hospital she works at dies and she is then subsequently promoted to head maternity nurse in the county the next few pages show that annie is then responsible for a number of infant deaths during her time as the head maternity nurse this scrapbook is important for a number of reasons it shows her to be cruel ambitious and psychotic but perhaps the most important thing we learn from this scrapbook is that annie is a killer and a killer with more than one motive on the one hand she kills people for her own gain namely the top student at her university and the veteran pediatrician but she also kills seemingly just for the sake of killing perhaps there are deeper motivations behind killing her father the coach and the car salesman or even the killing of the infants but we're only left to conclude that annie kills these people just because she can perhaps aiming to be in these high positions she's put herself in just so she was able to kill as much as she'd like unfortunately these behaviors aren't all in the past for annie shortly after we're given insights into her past transgressions annie's cruelty finally manifests on screen when she finds out paul has been leaving his room she now drugs him and restricts him even more than she had before hobbling him and leaving him crippled so he's unable to escape her and keep him trapped in her insane world for as long as she'd like she then goes on to show her willingness to kill to keep this world intact when she murders buster without so much as a tinge of emotion on her face shortly after these events paul takes advantage of something we hadn't quite seen yet annie's fragility and she fittingly meets her end in a life and death struggle with the man whose life and work she had abused to nurture the terrible tendencies she held within herself so after all this what do we have we have a seemingly inoffensive and traditional woman who is revealed to be a sadistic obsessive cruel terror of a person who murders for her own gain and her own personal pleasures in a twisted world she has manufactured for herself who knows if annie turned out the way she did due to past trauma or underlying mental illness but whatever the case in the end annie wilkes is a psychotic and obsessive serial killer that leaves many people myself included checking the locks on our doors and windows just one more time before we turn out the lights at night thank you all for watching this installment in the series and i hope you've enjoyed if you enjoyed the video be sure to leave a like and subscribe to my channel if you'd like to see more of my content please leave a comment below with any of your thoughts on this video or any suggestions you might have for villains to be explored in later episodes in this series as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 347,691

Rating: 4.9594102 out of 5

Keywords: Villain, Evil, Misery, Annie Wilkes, Stephen king, Analysis, Author, Writer, Horror

Id: qZBD_7x0U8w

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020