The Dark Room
Haunting Adeline Book vs Movie: Can It Stay This Dark?
Six hundred pages, about two and a half hours. What the film is likely to lose, and what is worth fighting for.
Six hundred pages. Roughly two and a half hours. Something has to go.
Carlton’s line is firm. “We are not watering this movie down.” She’s also said it’ll be “handled responsibly”. Those two can live together. Whether they will is the question.
The pressure won’t come from her. A film this dark still has to get past a rating board, and someone has to agree to distribute it. Those are the people who usually ask for a scene to be trimmed or cut. Carlton went with a film instead of a streamer for a reason, but no film escapes that conversation completely.
So what’s worth fighting for? The watching. The slow dread of being seen when you think you’re alone. The way the book makes you uneasy about what you want. None of it needs to be graphic on screen to land. It needs to be brave.
Before you go in, know what the book holds: Haunting Adeline trigger warnings.
Whose head are we in?
The book lives inside two heads. Adeline argues with herself on the page, scared and drawn in at the same time, and Zade narrates his own obsession.
A camera can’t narrate. It can only show. Scenes that read as Adeline’s tangled inner voice could look very different from the outside. For me, that’s the biggest adaptation risk, and it’s the one readers bring up most.
Horror film or romance film?
Carlton’s co-executive producer is named “Courtney”. Word is that’s Courtney Solomon, though the surname hasn’t been confirmed. If it is, that background is mostly horror. Readers are split on whether that’s a problem or exactly the point.
For what it’s worth, I think the dread is the best thing in the book. A horror instinct might be what protects it.
The scenes everyone asks about
One scene gets named again and again: the gun scene. I’m not describing it here. It’s one of the book’s non-consent scenes, and Carlton’s own warnings for the duet list non/dub-con between the main characters. Read the Haunting Adeline trigger warnings before you decide on the book or the film.
A second adaptation
The film isn’t alone. Adult comics from Deviant Ink are due in early 2027, per Variety, with collected graphic novels to follow.
FAQ
Will the gun scene be in the Haunting Adeline movie?
Nobody outside the production knows how any scene will be handled. All Carlton has said is that the film won’t be watered down.
Is the Haunting Adeline movie based on both books?
So far it’s book 1 only. A Hunting Adeline film hasn’t been confirmed.
On the shelf
The books this essay is standing next to. Notes on those pages are original. The warnings are there before the plot.
Essays are opinion. They are not a substitute for an author’s own warning note. Patreon · Ko-fi · Library