If there are two things that get a nasty rap, its horror remakes and Stephen King adaptations. 

While there are plenty of uninspired retreads that we’ve seen done better the first time around, many remakes exist in their own separate sphere, living as fascinating and sometimes very fun reinterpretations of their source material. It’s safe to say we’ve all had at least one craving to see some of our favorite directors tackle a remake; either out of a sense that a story deserved better, or just to see where the artistic process takes them. 

And for many horror fans who enjoy Stephen King’s works, those remakes we crave have been just about that. I find myself daydreaming pretty often about stories whose adaptations deserve a second (or third, or fourth) go around, so, I figured it was time to compile those daydreams into a proper article. Today we’ll delve into those, along with an idea of which horror filmmakers should direct them and why. 

7 Stephen King Adaptations That Deserve a Remake

7. THE TOMMYKNOCKERS – Jason Eisener

A change of tone is one of the best reasons for a remake. Undoubtedly one of Stephen King’s silliest adaptations, the original Tommyknocker’s miniseries really betrays the disturbing source material. Imagine if you will, a found footage film about a town slowly becoming a collective of genius technopaths who can build anything they dream of—at the cost of slowly having their life forces drained by mysterious alien entities. 

Eisener’s work on the V/H/S/2 segment “Slumber Party Alien Abduction”, shows he could make something horrifying out of the Tommyknocker’s Twilight Zone-esque premise without falling headfirst into the bottomless pit of cheese that plagued the miniseries. 

6. MISERY – Rose Glass 

With Glass’s latest venture being out this month, crime drama Love Lies Bleeding, I was spurred to revisit her debut feature Saint Maud. Five years later, the film has some of the best acting I’ve seen out of a psychological horror ever, and if there’s anyone who should be trusted in depicting one of Stephen King’s most misunderstood villains, it’s Rose Glass. 

I would be lying if I didn’t say this choice was driven at least in part by a desire to see Lizzy Caplan reprise the role of Annie Wilkes, given how criminally underrated Castle Rock’s second season was; Caplan’s performance there deserved a big screen focus. Glass’s direction of actress Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud leaves no doubts in my mind she would make a stunning venture deeper into the quiet and disturbing tragedy of Annie Wilkes and Paul Sheldon’s months in the cabin, regardless of who is put in the role.

That being said, it should absolutely be Lizzy Caplan who plays her, and I won’t be taking feedback on this. 

5. SILVER BULLET – Brian Duffield

Another adaptation of King’s novella Cycle of the Werewolf is, in my opinion, long overdue. While in recent years truly great werewolf movies like Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within and Larry Fessenden’s Blackout have supplemented the genre, there’s just not enough. 

Cycle of the Werewolf’s first adaptation, the 1985 Gary Busey film Silver Bullet, is fine. It’s entertaining enough as a midnight movie, but only holds up in its special effects and lacks a whole lot of the truly horrifying moments that the book has (as well as its most violent deaths). 

A remake helmed by one of the most underrated monster movie directors out there, Brian Duffield, would make an excellent addition to the subgenre, and one that would give Cycle its due. Duffield’s work on the smash hit No One Will Save You brought some of the most frightening grey aliens to ever grace the small screen, and his eye for playing with the darkness to elicit fear is already off the charts, as seen with his excellent 2020 feature Underwater. The woody town of Tarker’s Mill, plagued by its lycanthrope serial killer throughout the seasons, feels like the exact right place to exercise his aesthetic strengths. 

4. CUJO – Demián Rugna

I don’t want to reduce the horrors of When Evil Lurks and the skill of its incredibly talented writer-director Demián Rugna to a single scene or a single scare. But the fact is, the film’s most horrifying and dread-inducing moment is perfect evidence of why Rugna could make a new iteration of Cujo just as, if not more bloodcurdling. And the rest of the film just elaborates on that.

The story of a good dog driven to madness by sickness, and the families around him that suffer for it, Cujo is a bleak tale and one that’s every bit as horrifying of a story as it is depressing. The first film changed the ending in a major way, and mostly ignored the oppressive atmosphere for more of a thrilling story that startles, rather than one that’s as emotionally draining. Rugna knows how to craft and direct a story that will leave you feeling as empty as Cujo does. He has an eye for executing nauseatingly scary scenes, and directing chaotic violent moments that shock you completely, so he’s the only man I have in mind that could do the book justice.

3. SLEEPWALKERS – Brandon Cronenberg 

If you want weird body horror, mind games, and psychosexual freakshows, you hire a Cronenberg. And who better than Infinity Pool and Possessor’s very own visionary creator to redo one of King’s strangest films yet? 

One of the few works on this list that wasn’t originally a book or short story, the script King penned for Sleepwalkers is a head trip and a half: immortal psychic werecats that feed off the life force of virgin girls are feuding with actual cats. Despite its strange plot and many shortcomings dialogue-wise, Sleepwalkers is a cult classic, and nothing can take that away.

That being said, it wouldn’t hurt to modernize Sleepwalkers and get into the demented lore of the weird mother-son duo that is Charles and Mary Brady. Alice Krige and Brian Krause’s great acting and creepy dynamic in the 1992 film drive much of the plot’s intrigue. A modern character study of these two immortals, predatory beings once worshipped as gods and now reduced to simple murderers, would make for an intriguing story without sacrificing its odd and over-the-top ideas. 

2. CARRIE – Gigi Saul Guerrero

One of my personal favorite King stories, it always bothered me that we haven’t gotten a Carrie adaptation accurate to the formatting of the story. Not the characterization or emotion of Carrie White, since Brian DePalma’s 1976 and Bryan Fuller’s 2002 adaptations knock that out of the park, but rather how we get to learn about the destruction of Chamberlain and the young girl responsible. 

The legendary Stephen King novel is a series of firsthand accounts and witnesses to Carrie White’s rampage, scattered through journal entries, autobiographies, court testimony, and plain old narration. Carrie feels much more like a walking natural disaster that decimates the town. I believe a movie depicting the small town’s destruction as a sort of horrific mystery that has to be pieced together and understood would make for a thrilling adaptation. 

Enter Gigi Saul Guerrero, who would knock this out of the park. Guerrero’s work on one of the best V/H/S segments of all time, “God of Death”, shows she more than has the chops to depict the living wildfire that is Carrie White and her town-leveling psychic abilities. Her work in such a brief amount of time shows she could easily craft some incredibly horrifying depictions of being subject to the wrath of a young scorned woman.

1. MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE – Damien Leone

Imagine it. Absolute car-nage. 

Alright, now that I got that pun out of my system, the heart of the matter is that Damien Leone is an artisan when it comes to gore maximalism; we have two Terrifier films to prove that already. And while some might not appreciate his lack of subtlety, the man has what it takes to do over the top and grotesque insanely well. 

On the same note, King’s original short story Trucks is fairly over the top; it’s effectively a robot apocalypse where the Terminators have been replaced with Ford F-150s and U-Haul vans that only want to tow your corpse around as a trophy. The two movie adaptations, one of the same name and the other being the infamous Maximum Overdrive are funny, but they lack much of the oomph to make the cars feel like threats. They just haven’t depicted the concept of getting horribly murdered by living cars brutally enough, and all the disgusting special effects that could come out of that. 

So I say we give Damien Leone whatever he wants budget wise, and let him deliver on an exploitation movie with gruesome, aggressive killer cars absolutely decimating humans in the worst ways possible. Think Death Proof, but with kills that would make Tarantino blush. 

Let he who doesn’t want to see a Honda Accord rip someone apart cast the first stone.

 ***

Do you have any thoughts on adaptations that should be made, or just the ones that didn’t stick the landing the first time? Let us know on Twitter or Instagram! As always, stay tuned for more articles on all things horror in movies, television, and more!