i don't really know much about the terror novel, what's wrong with it?
*sharply inhales through teeth* Weeeell lemme write you an essay about it
It has that particular kind of repetitive vulgarity that you usually find when white men write Literature. Not a single female character goes by without a detailed description of her pubic hair. Silna is an eXoTiC sAvAgE and she and Crozier bang because he’s the protagonist.
Not everything in the book is bad… but it is a very, very different type of horror than the show. They’re incredibly different in both their tone and their values, which makes it absolutely wild that this show came from this kind particular source material.
Example: In the book, Goodsir is tortured, mutilated, and circumcised in Hickey’s camp. We SEE it happen, and we know WHY it happens, and because of that, (and because it’s a weak reason,) it doesn’t feel earned. It just feels shocking, vulgar. There’s a place in horror for shocking and vulgar, to be sure, but if they had included this in the show, it would’ve felt wildly out of place for what the rest of the show was. It wouldn’t have felt satisfying.
(In contrast, think of Crozier finding Edward Little’s pierced body, a thing which does not happen in the book. We don’t see it happen, and we don’t know why it happens. This makes the horror linger even after the episode ends. The book is a book that aims to shock, and succeeds, but it doesn’t linger.)
The show is very tightly written, which I appreciate. Absolutely everything is there because it needs to be, no time is wasted. The plot- they’re trapped and they want to get out- is simple and entirely character driven. But the book feels gratuitous, loading itself down with plot. It has less respect for the characters or for their deaths. It likes to moralize- an unforgivable sin of survival horror. The show resolutely refuses to moralize, which is just one of the many, many reasons why it stands out among other shows in its genre.
Maybe the book would’ve sat better with me if I had read it before the show, but as it stands, the source material feels very much like Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter series. Well-written, but steeped in too much sexism, racism, and off the shits plot choices to be fully enjoyable.
…oh also Crozier has THE SIGHT??? Which he inherited from his GRANDMOTHER??? so he can LOOK into the FUTURE and see MAGGIE FOX’S TITTIES and also the FUTURE which he can SEE because he has the SIGHT
