Alex Rivera | January 11, 2023

Stephen King Scream Job Winner 2022

Filmmaker, Filmwatcher—It’s All The Same for Steven Morris

Here’s an idea: watch 13 Stephen King movies during the Halloween season, keep track of your heart rate, and give us your results in video format, and we’ll pay you $1,300. For artist and filmmaker Steven Morris, this was the task at hand, and while many might balk at the idea of marathoning chilling horror classics like It and The Shining, Morris had no problem diving right in. The Plainfield, Illinois native was brave enough to watch 13 Stephen King flicks and get paid doing it, all sponsored by USDish.

Before we get into his scary results and rankings, let’s give a plug to his social accounts. You can follow him on all social platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok) @juststevenart. There you go, Morris—now we’re even.

Probably Wasn’t “Penny-Wise” to Watch These Alone

Morris ended up watching most of the Stephen King films by himself, bringing his girlfriend, Alicia, along for the ride for only two of the 13 flicks—Misery and Pet Sematary. However, his bravery was no match for Pennywise—he watched both It movies by himself and named Pennywise the scariest villain. “[Bill Skarsgård] was almost made to be a Pennywise,” Morris said in his results YouTube video. “He has a great command of his face that really adds on that extra sense of fear… He’s scary.”

Scary Results

• Though not the scariest in his “Scream Job Log” book, Morris’ favorite film was Misery. He hadn’t seen the movie before this challenge, so he was excited to sit down and watch. “Honestly, this movie was great,” Morris explains. “This movie was barely a horror, but easily a thriller…my heart was racing.” This all makes sense, considering Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for her role as Annie Wilkes.
• Rounding out the top five of his favorite Stephen King movies were Christine, Creepshow, The Shining, and Pet Sematary. You, too, may be skeptical of a killer car film, but Morris came out the other side praising the movie’s “oddly campy” yet excellent character work, making it his second favorite Stephen King movie. With four jump scares, the anthology Creepshow worked for Morris, despite its 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Across 13 movies, Morris shared he had 34 jump scares, averaging 2.6 jump scares per movie. While Doctor Sleep and Firestarter didn’t get him to jump out of his seat, Carrie, Pet Semetary, and Salem’s Lot all managed to give him five jump scares each. As for his scariest villain, Pennywise? The It films jump-scared Morris a total of four times.
• Morris had nightmares after seeing the movies Carrie and Creepshow. After watching Carrie, he dreamt, “I was walking down the street when I realized I was being hunted by the insane group of teenagers from Carrie, led by John Travolta. They were following me on rooftops and through stores until they cornered me, so I, unfortunately, had to swipe a gun off of one of them and fend for myself.” As for his Creepshow dream, we’ll just let him do the honors.

While his heart rate didn’t always coincide with how Morris was feeling, it was interesting to see which movies elevated his heart rate and which ones it simply hovered. Our winner shows it takes a special kind of person to sit and watch 13 horror films. We won’t ask anyone else to do the same…yet.