Most know Stephen King as today’s most revered horror author, the expert conjurer of the kinds of macabre souls that are embedded in our nightmares — the killer clown Pennywise from “It,” the all-work-and-no-play Jack Torrance from “The Shining” and the wackadoodle fan Annie Wilkes from “Misery.”

Stephen King ’s first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, “Steve has a movie camera in his head.” So vividly drawn is King’s fiction that it’s offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century,

Mike Flanagan crafts one of the finest Stephen King adaptations ever, capturing the soulful optimism bubbling beneath the author’s best work.