TRICK OR TREAT!

Keep the lights on—you never know what’s lurking in the dark . . . or in a book’s pages. Whether they’re filled with creatures, ghosts or everyday horrors, these stories would be perfect for the screen. From suspenseful thrillers to literary horror novels and spooky collections, your reading (and watching) list just got longer. But what directors would do these stories justice?

 

Jordan Peele

The Unveiling by Quan Barry

A literary horror with Quan Barry’s signature lyricism and humor; The Unveiling would thrive under the eye of Jordan Peele. Familiar with genre-bending comedy and horror, this story about a Black film scout aboard a luxury Antarctic cruise of wealthy, mostly white tourists would fit right in with Peele’s style and themes of racism, identity, and society with a complex central character. A story rife with social commentary that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America’s racial legacy.

“Irresistible . . . The Unveiling should be a Hulu series before you finish reading this sentence . . . Part dark satire, part ghost story.”—Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

 

Luca Guadagnino

Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro

Two-Step Devil is a striking and formally inventive story of the unlikely relationship between two strangers on the margins of society and the shadowy forces that threaten their futures. Luca Guadagnino has experience directing unconventional relationships and dark forces in Suspiria and Bones and All. Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.

“Two-Step Devil is a starkly gorgeous story of God and loss and art and love, and her best book yet.”—Lauren Groff

 

David Fincher

The Devil’s Best Trick by Randall Sullivan

With his history adapting real stories and handling true crime in Zodiac and Mindhunter, David Fincher could handle the sweeping feat of narrative nonfiction that is The Devil’s Best Trick. In the vein of Mindhunter, this book would translate best to a series, being a unique and far-reaching investigation into evil and the myriad of ways we attempt to understand it—particularly through the figure of the Devil. Moving through centuries of historical, religious and cultural conceptions of evil and the Devil, breaking these periods episodically would serve the narrative best.

“Each chapter is a turn, a surprise. The writing is never clichéd, nor is the thinking. Sullivan knows a great lede, and he’s just as good with cliffhangers.”–Clancy Martin, New York Times Book Review

 

Ari Aster

The Cellar by Minette Walters

A harrowing and compulsively readable novel about a family of African immigrants, the Songolis, and the dark secret they keep hidden in the depths of their seemingly respectable house in the London suburbs. Ari Aster’s history making Hereditary, Beau is Afraid, and his short film, The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, make him the perfect person to tackle themes of abuse, complex familial relationships, and domestic horror present in The Cellar.

“Reads like a recipe for evil and may well induce a nightmare or two . . . Sly pacing and a detached narrative voice give this horror story exceptional punch.” —Kirkus Reviews

 

Denis Villeneuve

DIS MEM BER by Joyce Carol Oates

DIS MEM BER covers stories from a precocious eleven-year-old girl who leaves with her mysterious older male relative to a university transfer student obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student. Denis Villeneuve, while quite busy with Dune, has excelled at portraying thrilling and gripping stories, like Prisoners and Enemy. This collection of seven feverishly unsettling stories has many contenders for a suspenseful psychological adaptation that Villeneuve’s style would portray expertly.

“Seven gothic tales that plumb the depths of women who, whatever their age, always seem to stand on the threshold of the heartbreaking tides of adolescence.” —Kirkus Reviews

 

Bong Joon Ho

Ritual by Mo Hayder

A grisly tale of murder, witchcraft, and the dark side of healing. Nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her fingers around a human hand with no body attached. Even more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. The investigation leads to the darkest recesses of Bristol’s underworld, where drug addiction is rife and where a disturbing ritual may be making an unexpected appearance. Bong Joon Ho’s previous work on Memories of Murder and Parasite, stories full of suspense and hidden secrets, is why his voice would complement Ritual well.

“Ritual is a thrilling ride through dark and dangerous places.” —Richard Dansky, author of Firefly Rain

 

Robert Eggers

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

This masterful, gothic reimagining of the infamous Lizzie Borden story gives us new insight on a well-known tale. While it may seem like a departure for Robert Eggers, his previous films including The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu, are all period pieces, and this adaptation would complement them well. This intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love, filled with unanswered questions and little evidence, would be the perfect next step for Eggers.

“Eerie and compelling, Sarah Schmidt breathes such life into the terrible, twisted tale of Lizzie Borden and her family, she makes it impossible to look away.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

 

Yorgos Lanthimos

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

In classic Sayaka Murata strange fashion, Vanishing World tackles a society where children are only born through artificial insemination. Adults have sexless marriages—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—but Amane and her husband Saku decide to live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City, where children are raised communally and men become pregnant using artificial wombs. Yorgos Lanthimos’s specialty is surrealist settings paired with dark comedy, usually with a prominent sexual overtone, like in Poor Things, The Favourite, and his newest Bugonia. Lanthimos has what it takes to translate Murata’s style faithfully to the screen.

“The fictosexual love scenes express a pure sensual pleasure . . . Murata . . . is remaking the traditional love story, transcending the constraints dictated not by gender but by embodied corporeality itself.”—Elif Batuman, New Yorker

 

Mike Flanagan

Muckross Abbey and Other Stories by Sabina Murray

Master of horror Mike Flanagan is well-versed in hauntings—he has two whole series about them. His work on The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Fall of the House of Usher and his Stephen King adaptations lends Flanagan perfectly to this collection of gothic stories. Sabina Murray brings readers to haunted sites from a West Australian convent school to the moors of England to the shores of Cape Cod in ten tales. These macabre stories are sure to captivate and chill, as unsettling as the settings in a Mike Flanagan show or movie.

“I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale.”—Mona Awad, author of Bunny

 

Osgood Perkins

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

An instant bestseller in the UK, The Daylight Gate is a vision of a dark period of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power. In 1612, deep in the words of Pendle Hill there is a coven gathering of thirteen. Two have been imprisoned for witchcraft, but those who remain are vouched by the mysterious and gifted Alice Nutter who possesses eternally youthful beauty and fortune and stands alone as a realm-crosser and conjurer of powers. In the hands of Osgood Perkins, writer and director of Longlegs and The Blackcoat’s Daughter, this deeply mysterious and haunting story would fit in with Perkins’ filmography.

“From one gruesome development to the next, Winterson’s haunting imagery and narrative immediacy captivate…an engrossing story that’s sure to leave you shivering.” —Catherine Straut, Elle