Five Stephen King Film Adaptations That Prioritize Psychological Depth Over Gore

While films such as “It,” “Cujo,” and “Carrie” are well-known for their intense and graphic nature, not every adaptation from King’s oeuvre leans towards the gruesome. King has penned stories that delve into deeper psychological and emotional territories, as demonstrated by the cinematic masterpieces “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand By Me.” These films, though not devoid of violence, are celebrated more for their emotional depth and exploration of human relationships rather than sheer horror.

For those who appreciate King’s storytelling — his unique blend of childhood fears, adult themes, and memorable dialogue — but have a low tolerance for gore, there are adaptations that focus more on the psychological aspects of his narratives.

One such example is 2014’s “A Good Marriage,” for which King wrote the screenplay. This film is based on a novella from his collection “Full Dark, No Stars,” and takes inspiration from the real-life capture of Dennis Rader, the notorious “BTK” killer. Rader’s long history of evading capture until 2005 posed a haunting question: how did his wife remain oblivious to his heinous crimes? King crafted a story exploring this chilling premise.

In 2014, Stephen King wrote the screenplay for “A Good Marriage,” adapted from a novella by the same name that was published in “Full Dark, No Stars.” The story is inspired by the arrest of Dennis Rader, the “BTK” killer — which stood for bind, torture, kill. Though he’d been active for decades, Rader wasn’t captured until 2005. At the time, plenty of people wondered how his wife could possibly have been unaware of the fact that her husband was a sexually-sadistic serial killer … which gave King an idea for a story.

The film isn’t necessarily great, but it’s certainly better than people give it credit for. Some of King’s screenplays have been straight-up awful, like “Maximum Overdrive,” which might be Stephen King’s worst film ever. “A Good Marriage,” though, rests on the fact that it has two fantastic actors in the lead roles. Anthony LaPaglia and Joan Allen play Bob and Darcy Anderson, a happy couple who have a — what else? – good marriage. Unlike Rader’s real-life wife, Darcy finds evidence of her husband’s crimes, leading to a tense psychodrama that unfurls as she must decide whether he’s as guilty and as dangerous as he seems.

Rader’s daughter, Kerri Rawson, accused the horror legend of exploiting her father’s victims. Furthermore, she said Rader would like the attention. “Great -– now Stephen King is giving my father a big head. Thanks for that. That’s the last thing my dad should get,” she told The Wichita Eagle. 

In 2004, the year after Johnny Depp starred in the first installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, he led “Secret Window.” The movie, which was written and directed by David Koepp, was based on the novella “Secret Window, Secret Garden,” which was included in King’s collection “Four Past Midnight.” Depp starred as Mort Rainey, a mystery writer who finds himself at the center of a mystery all his own. After he realizes his wife is cheating on him, Mort is confronted by a man named John Shooter (John Turturro), another writer who alleges that Mort once plagiarized his story.

The film is a twisted thriller that is far more psychological than it is gory. As with many King adaptations, violence plays a part, but this is more about the psychodrama than it is any particular gore. Much as “A Good Marriage” is a battle of wits between husband and wife, “Secret Window” is about these two men going head-to-head; Mort becomes terrified of Shooter, worried that the man’s anger is going to escalate into something truly horrific.

King likes to write about writers, and “Secret Window” understands the particular way King fears writers might disappear into their own minds. Adaptations like “The Dark Half” and “Bag of Bones” are working at similar things, but “Secret Window” does it best. Like “A Good Marriage,” it’s not going to make anyone’s list of the best King films, but it’s not half bad.

Stephen King’s 1982 collection “Different Seasons” was made up of four novellas. “The Breathing Method” has not, as of press time, been adapted into a film. “The Body” became “Stand By Me,” and “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” dropped the first half of its title; those are two of the most-acclaimed films of all time, let alone the best Stephen King films ever made.

The fourth was “Apt Pupil,” adapted into a 1998 film. Director Bryan Singer, who would later go on to direct a number of “X-Men” films, cast his future Magneto, Ian McKellen, as Kurt Dussander, the elderly neighbor of a high school kid named Todd (Brad Renfro). Though they strike up a friendship, Todd realizes that his new mentor is actually a former Nazi, someone who fled to America at the height of the war and has been living in obscurity. While many people would be frightened of someone like that, Todd becomes fascinated by Dussander’s sadomasochism. It’s an incredibly tense, upsetting watch.

The novella is quite graphic; there are numerous scenes of rape, torture, and murder, as Todd learns that his neighbor never stopped killing. The film, however, omits many of these incidents, and what’s left is a psychosexual nightmare of a film made all the more uncomfortable when you read about the several lawsuits that alleged abuse of minors on set. There are now plenty more allegations against Singer, including in Variety, perhaps lending those “Apt Pupil” stories some weight.

If any director’s name is synonymous with “body horror,” it’s probably David Cronenberg. From the grotesque “new flesh” of “Videodrome” to the exploding heads of “Scanners,” from Jeff Goldblum’s horrific transformation in “The Fly” to the squelchy implants that power “eXistenZ,” Cronenberg has given horror some of its grossest gross-out gore.

His 1983 film “The Dead Zone,” on the other hand, is positively restrained in comparison. It’s based on the novel by the same name, about a man named Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) who awakens from a coma with a curious power. When he touches someone — a hug, a handshake — he can see a glimpse of their future. Eventually, Johnny realizes that there’s a “dead zone,” a grey area where the future he fears can still be changed. When Johnny meets a political candidate and sees a horrific future, he works to make sure it doesn’t come to pass.

This is way more of a political thriller than it is a body-horror movie, resembling paranoid films of the 1970s like “The Parallax View” more than it resembles much of Cronenberg’s other work. Walken is excellent, as is Martin Sheen as the slimy politician who might just be responsible for the end of the world. Of course, a lot of its frightening satirical relevance has been diminished as our real-life system has spun out of control … but that also just makes “The Dead Zone” seem even more elegant in retrospect.

Fans are often surprised to learn how Stephen King really felt about “The Shining” movie, because depending on who you ask, the Stanley Kubrick film is one of the scariest films based on one of King’s stories. It’s about a family who is charged with caring for The Overlook Hotel during the winter, trapped together in a place that doesn’t seem to play by normal rules. There are ghosts here, including the bloated corpse of a lady in a bathroom; on the whole, the horror in “The Shining” isn’t gory at all. It’s all about how creepy it is for two twin girls to entreat a child, “Come play with us!”

Furthermore, “The Shining” is a powerful allegory for what it’s like to grow up in a family with an abusive, alcoholic father. Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a writer who plans to crank out a book over the winter; instead, he succumbs to his addiction, growing increasingly violent with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Sure, “The Shining” is scary when Jack swings an ax, but it’s even scarier when he sits at his typewriter, pounding away at the keys, stewing in his own resentment and isolation.

Kubrick was well aware of the cerebral tension in his film. He told an interviewer (via Visual Memory), “‘The Shining’ uses … psychological misdirection to forestall the realization that the supernatural events are actually happening.” What’s left is a frightening film that’s surprisingly light on the gore.