Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Alamy
Paul Tremblay has a fun party game he stores in his back pocket. It’s a little twisted, considering he wrote The Cabin at the End of the World, the book upon which M. Night Shymalan’s new horror Knock at the Cabin is based. No, it doesn’t involve asking, “Who would you kill out of your two closest loved ones?” It’s actually a little darker than that.
“What’s the shortlist of movies that are better than the book?” Tremblay asks me ,as we have coffee before his upcoming Q+A session at The Strand in New York City. He tells me he hopes Knock at the Cabin doesn’t fall under this category. “But if it does, hey—what are you going to do? It’s fine.”
Tremblay says Jaws. I agree and add Jurassic Park, one of my favorite movies of all time, but he still makes a strong case for the original Michael Crichton novel. It’s hard for Tremblay to prefer movie adaptations over the original book, however, especially after seeing how the process runs as he worked with Shyamalan on Knock at the Cabin. He’s even been watching The Last of Us with his family and taking more attentive notes on his daughter’s references to the original game, more conscious of how adaptations alter source material.