Movies vs Books: An Unfair Comparison

As Hollywood continues to run out of ideas, they're going to keep turning any and all books into movies. Any book that is remotely similar to anything that made money is going to get the big screen treatment at some point or another. Some of these movies will be good while some of them will inevitably end up being train-wrecks.

However we need to take a step back in how we judge and critique these movies. Stories that we loved in print form are not necessarily going to be translated word for word into the movie and nor should they be or can they be.

When you're reading a book, the author has the ally of your imagination when you're reading, especially when it comes to horror stories. The author can paint just a vague picture of a demon for example and your imagination will fill in the rest. If you're reading about something you know is horrible, your brain will immediately fill in the most horrible thing it can conceive because the scariest thing is the unknown. Not giving you concrete details about something is scarier than knowing every little thing.

I can't find the exact person to attribute this quote to but I will always remember this from an English class in high school: "If I tell you that there's a 10 foot cockroach on the other side of the door, you'll just say 'Oh that's scary but at least it's not a 20 foot cockroach.' And if I tell you that there's a 20 foot cockroach on the other side of the door you'll say 'Oh that's scary but at least it's not a 30 foot cockroach.' The fear of the unknown is always greater than the known."

Horror films suffer the most from this because before when the author could leave most of it up to your imagination, a film director has to actually do the job that your imagination did before.  No matter what they can come up with, it's not as scary as not actually knowing. It's natural human instinct to fear the unknown and as soon as it known, it is instantly less scary.

So when watching a movie based on a book, look at it through a different lens. What you pictured in your imagination is most likely not going to be what is shown on the screen but that doesn't make it a bad movie. The imagination is a powerful weapon but beware the double-edged sword. Enjoy the movie for what it's worth, as a separate entity of the book.