Stephen King adaptations are much like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates in that “you never know what you’re gonna get” when you sit down to watch one. Will it be a truly frightening feature that’s also faithful to the source material like The Mist (2007) and Misery (1990)? Or will it merely serve as a quick cash grab like the seemingly endless entries in the Children of the Corn franchise? Some adaptations result in a successful tribute to King’s empathetic, three-dimensional characters and masterful suspense, while others tend to flounder with underdeveloped protagonists and reliance on cheap scares.
Among film and television adaptations of his dozens of novels, hundreds of short stories, and even a few screenplays, discovering one that sticks to King’s plot, characters, and suspense is rarer than it should be despite the solid source material. For every solid and faithful King adaptation, it seems like there are three more that failed to live up to their potential. Here are five adaptations from the Master of Horror that deserve another shot at success on the silver (or streaming) screen.
Table of Contents
Cujo (1983)
It’s hard to pass by an aggressive, barking dog and not think of the titular Saint Bernard going on a bloody rampage. In Cujo, scream queen Dee Wallace turns in a solid performance as Donna Trenton, the target of Cujo’s rabies-induced rage, and it’s her harrowing experience with her son (Danny Pintauro) that awards the film most of its points. Despite this, the film has an overly slow build-up until its violent conclusion (which is pretty light on scares for a Stephen King adaptation). A remake that doubles down on the Trenton family conflict while deepening the mother and son bond between Donna and Tad would heighten the fear, especially if it sticks to the novel’s much darker and depressing ending. It might be a difficult task to film the more quieter and introspective parts of the novel, but looking at what Mike Flanagan did with Gerald’s Game, it’s not quite as impossible as it may seem. Animal horror seems to be a waning sub-genre but a Cujo reboot might be the thing it needs to breathe some life back into it.
The Dark Tower (2017)
Fans who have been clamoring for a faithful adaptation of The Dark Tower saga since the first installment of the eight-part novel series was released in 1982 might have to wait a little longer. It’s no secret that the 2017 film adaptation was panned by both audiences and critics, despite earning nearly double its production budget in its worldwide gross. The visuals are well done and the acting is fine, with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey turning in solid performances as gunslinger Roland Deschain and the Man in Black, respectively, but solid acting does not make up for a messy (and complicated) plot. Rather than trust viewers’ attention with a straightforward adaptation of the decidedly slower pace and Western vibes of the first novel in the series, The Gunslinger, the filmmakers opted to instead cram characters and stories from the first three novels into one 95 minute film. The result is rushed and messy with a film that features neither the gritty Western atmosphere of The Gunslinger, the action and character work of The Drawing of the Three, or the adventure and sci-fi elements of The Wastelands. The condensed (and dense) story might be easy to follow for fans who have read the series, but it doesn’t make it an easy experience for Dark Tower newbies.
It also didn’t help matters that the film’s screenplay credit is shared by not one, not two, not three, but four different people (Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and director Nikolaj Arcel). The amount of differing visions of what the story should be as it cycled through its many drafts and revisions caused the film to lose narrative focus. Quite simply, it’s a case of having too many cooks in the Stephen King kitchen. It’s not a completely wasted effort, but it’s also not a King adaptation like The Green Mile that cements itself as untouchable with further adaptations.
Needful Things (1993)
Needful Things is a prime example of what happens when a 736-page book is condensed into a 120-minute film. Predictably, much of the character depth of small-town Castle Rock’s residents is lost in translation, giving us little reason to care about them and their plight when a mysterious proprietor of an antique shop (Max von Sydow) comes to town. Townspeople making unknown deals with the devil should be a no-brainer when it comes to capitalizing on dramatic tension, but most of the drama with the residents of Castle Rock — the grudges, violence, backstabbing, and murder — is almost campy, such as Nettie Cobb (Amanda Plummer) and Wilma Jerzyck (Valri Bromfield) fighting to the death with knives and meat cleavers atop Wilma’s roof. The result is a film with underdeveloped characters that fail to inspire audience empathy — not to mention that the film just isn’t scary or overtly horror-centric, either in the evil acts of von Sydow’s Leland Gaunt, the destruction of Castle Rock, or the altercations and murders that the townspeople are convinced to commit in order to secure their own “needful thing.”
Needful Things isn’t a bad movie. Most of the performances are solid and its depiction of small-town Castle Rock is brimming with autumn-in-New England vibes. But it ultimately doesn’t live up to the potential it sometimes shows, hinting at the darker and more faithful adaptation it could have been.
Under the Dome (2013-2015)
Oh, Under the Dome, you had such a promising start.
What began as a pretty faithful television adaptation of Stephen King’s 2009 novel quickly went off the rails with a dense mythology that seemed to get more and more complex as it went along. While it’s always admirable when network television swings for the fences with new and out-of-the-box science fiction shows and ideas, it’s not long before Under the Dome introduced increasingly bizarre and campy plot devices like alien eggs, mysterious fluorescent pink butterflies, a cave of cocooned humans, a mysterious energy company, and government cover-ups and conspiracies. It’s mindless fun for a show that aired in the lazy months of summer, but it all ends up being a bit silly. The main problem is that instead of following the novel’s plot and letting the story run its course over eight, 10, or 12 episodes, CBS milked it for 39 episodes over three seasons, digging the show into a deep narrative hole with no satisfying way out.
A new and successful adaptation of the source material has the possibility of being a welcome addition to the pantheon of King classics, especially with the chance to properly adapt the novel’s broad cast of three-dimensional characters, undercurrents of fear and desperation, and the horrifying decisions that people make when staring down what amounts to be a ticking timebomb. There are big ideas and even bigger thrills that would look great on film. Plus, it would allow for a darker, grittier tone and material that the network TV adaptation just couldn’t accommodate. Under the Dome is a solid example of what happens when money dictates a show rather than storytelling. It didn’t necessarily fail, but it didn’t succeed either. Let’s try again, shall we?
Rose Red (2002)
Audiences are always hungry for a new take on a haunted house tale, and Rose Red, King’s ABC miniseries which he scripted himself, was a prime example of that impulse when it drew 20 million viewers for its first of three episodes. And you know what? It’s pretty solid. It features a great cast of talented performers (Nancy Travis, Melanie Lynskey, Kimberly J. Brown, Matt Ross, and Emily Deschanel, among others), deals with many of the exciting supernatural plot elements of King’s novels (such as psychic phenomena), and highlights King’s gift for empathetic child characters. Rose Red is super watchable, though its effects, scares, and made-for-TV drama are all a bit dated. An update would give the opportunity to capitalize on the special effects and technology upgrades that have come over the nearly twenty years since it was released. The prospect of a remake with a darker and chillier atmosphere of what is already a robust plot with an interesting group of characters is an exciting one. The universe that King has created here is ripe with story possibilities and an update in the right hands could end up as something akin to Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House with solid character development and genuine scares.
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