Secret Window a film based off of one of Stephen King’s (view the master of horror’s site here) short stories titled, Secret Window, Secret Garden in the collection Four Past Midnight is probably one of my most favorite movies. It has my favorite actor, Johnny Depp, who portrays the main character of Mort Rainey with incredible skill. I saw the movie long before I ever read the short story and fell in love with it. The story is dark and twisted and unbelievably clever. Plus, wanting to be a writer myself I enjoyed the connection that the story had to the industry.
Secret Window is about an author by the name of Mort Rainey, who gets awakened to a pounding on his door one day. Upon answering it a man by the name of John Shooter introduces himself and accuses him of stealing one of his stories. Rainey compares the manuscripts and almost every word is the same. Shooter turns up time and again thrusting Rainey into a horrific nightmare. Shooter demands that he won’t stop until Rainey fixes his story, fixes the ending. Mean while Rainey already has personal issues he is dealing with, the break up between him and his wife, Amy.
After finishing the short story there were parts that I liked about both and part that I disliked about both. The dialogue in the book and movie are surprisingly similar. Hardly anything was changed with the things that the characters say when it transitioned to the big screen. The changes I did notice seemed to me like they would have been made to make the movie more suspenseful and at times more comedic as well. I noticed that in the book Rainey’s character talks to himself much more than he does in the film. I also noticed that in the book John Shooter calls more than he shows up, where as in the movie Shooter calls only once the rest of the encounters are in person. Both of these things I can see the benefit in changing. It wouldn’t be as interesting to just watch him get phone calls all the time.
I really didn’t like the ending in the book, it was completely different to that of the movie and I honestly thought the movie’s ending was amazing. The ending of the film is what made me like the story so much because I thought how it all came together was very clever. When I finished the short story and it was different I felt like part of the story had been ruined so it wasn’t as effective of a tale as it could have been.
Honestly though, book and movie are very similar besides the very, very end and some minor details that aren’t that important anyways. Which is good, for the most part I felt like I was actually just reading the movie I had grown so fond of. I can recommend them both, but my loyalty remains with the ending of the film version.
Here is the trailer:
Enjoy!!
