Stephen King adaptations changes often reshape the endings of his stories in film versions. These alterations highlight how filmmakers choose to reinterpret King’s typically unresolved and ambiguous conclusions, providing viewers with different experiences than the original narratives offer.
How Endings Are Transformed in Stephen King Film Versions
Stephen King is famous for leaving his stories open-ended or ambiguous, creating a mood of uncertainty. Many films based on his works shift away from this approach, opting instead for conclusive or more dramatic finales. Some adaptations even depart significantly from King’s original themes, tones, or plotlines, as seen in projects like The Lawnmower Man. These adaptations pick major story elements but sometimes completely rethink their resolutions.
As one filmmaker pointed out,
“Actually, what if we didn’t do that at all?”
This mindset has led to a range of revised endings across Stephen King-inspired films.
The Night Flier: A Darker Fate for the Reporter
The Night Flier follows Richard Dees, a cynical tabloid journalist investigating mysterious murders near airports, which leads him to a vampire named Dwight Renfield.
The film stays mostly faithful but changes the ending substantially. After Dees encounters Renfield post-feast, Renfield compels him to drink his blood, causing Dees to hallucinate that the dead bodies are alive. Dees begins attacking them with an axe, leading to his death by gunshot from the police. The story then shifts blame for the murders onto Dees through his colleague’s report.
In contrast, the original story ends with Renfield destroying Dees’ evidence, leaving him haunted and questioned by police but alive. This film change gives Dees a punishment aligned with the trauma his investigations have caused others, deepening his fate with more immediate consequences.
1408: Personalized Haunting Versus Ambiguous Terror
Both the story and film of 1408 focus on Mike Enslin, a skeptic who spends time in a haunted hotel room in New York. However, their depictions of the evil differ significantly.
The short story describes roughly 70 minutes of surreal and unsettling experiences, culminating with Enslin sensing an entity attempting to break through a wall, barely escaping. The movie reimagines Room 1408’s haunting as a bespoke psychological torment based on Enslin’s memories, forcing him into a loop until he dies.
The film portrays the room as a malevolent force bent on killing, which contrasts with the story’s more abstract, eldritch horror. Both interpretations effectively unsettle, yet the film opts for a more direct and sinister portrayal of evil.
The Raft: A More Action-Oriented and Ironic Ending
The The Raft segment in Creepshow 2 maintains the core plot of a group of teenagers stranded on a lake raft falling prey to a deadly, amorphous creature.
In the original story, the last survivor, Randy, succumbs to the creature’s hypnotic sway, seemingly accepting his fate with quiet dread. Conversely, the film shows Randy attempting to escape while the creature consumes a friend. He nearly reaches the shore but is pulled back into the water by the monster in a wave-like motion. The ending wraps with a visual gag highlighting a concealed “No Swimming” sign near the lake, adding a darkly humorous touch.
The Mist: A Harrowing Change That Darkens the Conclusion
The Mist film closely follows the novella’s premise of survivors trapped in a supermarket by a fog filled with monsters, but diverges drastically at the ending.
The original story closes with the survivors venturing into uncertainty, driving away with no clear resolution. The movie, however, offers a devastating turn: after running out of gas, David (played by Thomas Jane) uses his last bullets to kill everyone in the car, including his son, to spare them from monster attacks. Moments later, military forces arrive, clearing the mist and defeating the creatures.
This revised ending adds brutal finality and hopelessness, intensifying the emotional impact by undercutting any hope of rescue.
The Long Walk: Offering Closure Through a New Champion
The Long Walk film adapts King’s novel about boys forced to walk nonstop until only one remains, with the survivor receiving a prize.
While the book ends on a bleak note with winner Ray Garraty losing grip on reality and chasing a shadow only he can see, the movie opts for a slightly different ending. Here, Peter McVries becomes the winner and uses his prize to honor Garraty’s wish to kill the oppressive Major controlling the event (played by Mark Hamill). Though Peter ultimately continues walking, this change delivers meaningful closure absent from the novel’s more ambiguous finale.
The Running Man: Streamlining and Lightening the Story
The original novel The Running Man features a dystopian reality show where contestants evade hunters across varied global locations over 30 days, involving multiple confrontations.
The 1987 film drastically condenses the story to a single night in a decaying Los Angeles neighborhood. Main character Ben Richards transforms from a slight figure in the book to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscular action hero. The film sacrifices much of the novel’s broader scale and darker themes to create a tightly paced, action-heavy spectacle with added humor, moving away from King’s grim tone.
The Boogeyman: Reimagining Horror as a Grief Monster
The 2023 movie The Boogeyman shares little beyond names and the premise of the original story, which features Lester Billings recounting how his children died mysteriously after mentioning the Boogeyman.
While the original ends with the twist that the psychiatrist Dr. Harper is the Boogeyman, the film expands the concept into a metaphorical Grief Monster that moves on to Harper’s household. This transformation stretches the brief tale into a feature-length story exploring themes of grief, akin to The Babadook, moving away from the simpler supernatural horror of King’s narrative.
Doctor Sleep: Bridging Novel and Kubrick’s Film Legacy
Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, navigates between following King’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film.
The storyline follows adult Danny Torrance aiding a girl with psychic abilities to defeat a group of vampires. However, the film resembles Kubrick’s universe more closely, retaining the Overlook Hotel and featuring characters resembling Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson’s portrayals. Flanagan honors King by giving Danny the same sacrificial ending as in the book, where he destroys the hotel’s boiler to save his friend, blending the two continuities.
The Shining: From Supernatural Terror to Psychological Drama
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining is iconic but markedly different from King’s novel, which displeased the author.
The film keeps the basic setup—a family isolated in a haunted hotel with psychic Danny—but shifts focus from supernatural ghosts to human psychological breakdown, emphasizing Jack Torrance’s alcoholism and anger as the core menace. This changes the tone significantly, making the horror more internal and psychological, contrasting King’s emphasis on the haunted hotel’s malevolent spirits. Despite criticism by King, Kubrick’s version remains celebrated.
The Monkey: Turning Horror into Dark Comedy
Osgood Perkins’ adaptation of King’s short story The Monkey radically alters the tone by turning the eerie tale of a cymbal-banging toy predicting death into a grimly comedic film.
Perkins substitutes the cymbals with a drum and infuses the story with dark humor, exploring the randomness of life and death. Unlike the original story’s dread and gloom, this film blends sharp comedy with violence, standing apart as a unique take on King’s grief-themed horror.
The Impact of Altered Endings in Stephen King Adaptations
These ten adaptations illustrate how films based on Stephen King’s work often reinterpret or reshape endings to deliver fresh perspectives or fit different storytelling needs. From darker, more final conclusions to twists on character fates and tones, these changes reveal the filmmakers’ intent to both honor and transform the source material.
Such adaptations affect audience reception and discussion by offering varied emotional and narrative experiences. They emphasize the adaptability of King’s stories, showcasing how even iconic horror tales can be retold with new layers and meanings for contemporary viewers.
