Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne (1995) is a bleak drama from the Stephen King novel, available to watch online on iFILM. An aging housekeeper on a small Maine island is accused of murdering her employer, the wealthy and bedridden Vera Donovan, found dead at the bottom of a staircase.

Dolores's daughter Selena, a Manhattan magazine writer who hasn't spoken to her mother in fifteen years, comes back to the island. Detective John Mackey has carried a grudge for two decades: Dolores's drunk, abusive husband Joe drowned during a solar eclipse back in the seventies, and Mackey never bought the accident. Kathy Bates plays a woman whose silence weighs more than any confession, while Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the daughter slowly recovering what she spent years forcing herself to forget. Christopher Plummer and David Strathairn round out the tight, suffocating circle.

Taylor Hackford delivered a rare King story with no monsters, where all the dread is human and washed-out flashbacks peel back what really happened that eclipse afternoon. It was Bates's second major King role after Misery, and many rate it her best. A slow, hard thriller about women, abuse and the price of getting out alive. Stream Dolores Claiborne (1995) online on iFILM.