The film Things Heard and Seen, starring Amanda Seyfried and Natalia Dyer and directed by Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, premiered on Netflix recently, and while a lot of people have watched it and I see people talking about it, something I have yet to see many reviews acknowledge is the fact that the film is actually based on a novel, the literary thriller All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage. I’m not sure if it’s the change in title that has thrown people off or the fact that this novel didn’t seem to be one of the “popular” more cult following books that ends up on everyone’s social media everywhere and makes every magazine’s must read list so viewers and readers alike perhaps didn’t realize it was an adaptation. (It certainly wasn’t heavily promoted as an adaptation.) I think it’s worth acknowledging, however, and worth delving into, because the novel is a very beautifully written, expansive work, and the movie—while faithful in many ways—is an interesting and, at times, successful interpretation of the original work.
First things first, I feel compelled to dive a little bit into my perspective on book to movie adaptations. I’ve always loved watching films based on books and seeing how someone brings the work to the screen, but I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to have more appreciation for how the filmmaker interprets the work in their own way and brings their vision of the source material to life on the screen. Despite what it’s based on, at the end of the day, it is a separate piece of art. I definitely used to be more critical of a movie the more it differed from the book simply for the sake of it differing from the book, but as I’ve matured both as a human and an artist (at least I hope), I’ve grown to have a lot more respect for the fact that all artists are different and just because you’re interpreting a source material doesn’t mean your vision will manifest itself in precisely the same way the original author’s did—to say nothing of the respective limitations of different forms of media.
I suppose all this is to say, just because a movie differs from a book doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad thing and I don’t think we can fault them for that and that alone, but I do enjoy examining those differences and thinking about why the creators made those choices and which I think works better. In some cases, the book is better, and I have no shame saying that, and I will tell you to my voice is raw to read the damn book. Just read it. Either way, I think you should read it. In some cases, the movies and the book stand as equals in my mind. I think Fight Club is an excellent example of this. And in some rare instances—get ready to clutch your pearls—I think the movie adaptation is better than the book. I’m looking at you, Annihilation.
I will definitely still be highlighting some of the book to movie changes here, for better or for worse, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m downgrading or looking down on the movie for having those differences—but I will definitely be telling you which changes I liked and which ones, ehhh, not so much. ALSO, yes, there will be some spoilers in this review, but they will be more heavily stacked toward the end. If you hate spoilers or don’t want to know any single thing at all, this is going to be way too detailed, but the worst of them will be at the end of the review, and I will spoil the ending for both the book and the movie at the very end, so. Keep that in mind.
The first thing that I immediately noted was that the novel is a really sprawling, whole town affair. You know the type I mean. It’s a literary thriller and it’s one of those books that basically gets the whole town involved. The short of it is that the book is about George and Catherine Clare, who buy an old farmhouse in upstate New York and move in, eventually ending in Catherine’s brutal murder which George is suspected of perpetrating. Take note this isn’t a spoiler: both the movie and the book open with the discovery of Catherine’s dead body, and then we flash back.
In the book, we start in a narrow view of George finding Catherine’s body in the very first chapter, and then we pull back—way, way back—and we get a look at the Hale family (inexplicably changed to “Vayle” in the movie for some reason; I’ve got nothing for that one, sorry. Perhaps the screenwriter just thought it sounded cooler with a V? Perhaps it’s a play on “veil”, an allusion the lifting of the veil between two planes of existence or dimensions that is often not only referenced but also portrayed in the film? Perhaps I’m reading way too much into it? These are all equally likely), the Hale family’s life on the farm, the Hale boys’ friends, the sheriff, some of the neighbors. There was so much diving into the lives of the other local families who would all eventually join up to play a part in the bigger story that I almost found it to be a bit of a slow starter, wondering when we were going to get back to the Clares (George, Catherine, and Franny) and figure out exactly what happened there. Eventually though, as I continued to read, I gained a lot more appreciation for the opportunity to get to know all the players. Once they come back around and everything is woven together, I loved seeing how every character’s thread added to the tapestry not just of the storyline, but the setting as well. It’s a story that may be familiar in a way, but in this version, it can only take place this way in this setting with this cast of characters.
The movie, however, is a little more tightly focused. We still have a pretty good cast of characters here—not just the immediate family, but also the Hale brothers, a couple neighbors, some friends/colleagues of George’s, and brief appearances from both sets of parents. But overall, it’s a much more tightly focused work that eliminates a lot of characters. Most significantly excluded from the script, for example, is one of the Hale brothers, Wade. We are missing a whole brother. Granted, Wade doesn’t do a lot in the novel, so if you’re going to get rid of any of them, I guess I get why you would pick him—Eddy and Cole both play much bigger parts. But it was an interesting choice of thread to pull and did take apart some of the story. We also lose their uncle and his girlfriend who take them in, several other friends and colleagues. No one so significant as Wade, probably, but people who definitely added sprinkles of flavor. This is a change I can completely understand and don’t necessarily fault the filmmakers for. Even at what I think would be considered long for a movie, clocking in at a solid chunk of two hours, there is only so much space you have in a movie versus in a book. This is always the case, and something always has to go, bringing to the mind that graphic of the iceberg, or the one where someone cut a shape of a DVD out of the center of a book. I can see why they wanted to keep it more tightly focused. We may not always agree with the things the filmmaker decides to throw overboard, but we can certainly see why it’s necessary to make the whole thing float.
As far as changes I am not so sure I understand, there was a hell of a lot more emphasis on Catherine’s eating disorder in the movie. In the novel, the summation of it seems to be a few lines kind of alluding to her desperation to look perfect and maintain a certain image both as herself and as “George’s wife”. But in the novel, they add a whole eating disorder subplot and I think if we had left that out, maybe we would have had room to add some other things in that served the story better. I’d love to discuss with the writers and filmmakers their motivation behind completely adding in this whole new storyline. Not in an aggressive way like, “wow, I’d love to hear why you think that’s a good idea”, but in a genuine way. I want to know what the motivation was behind that creative choice. The only things I can think of are either to humanize Cathy and make her more relatable to audiences and maybe make audiences sympathetic to her to know she is struggling (which I don’t think is necessary because I was already extremely sympathetic to her without it) or maybe to introduce this whole “protein shake” storyline so that George has an easy way to slip her a sedative later on down the road, which just seems…really unnecessary. There are other ways to go about it than to add a whole extra storyline like that. Perhaps it was to replace another subplot in the book that was completely removed, which is that of Catherine’s pregnancy. She becomes pregnant a second time while they are living in the farmhouse, but out of fear of bringing another child into the world with George, she quietly leaves for an abortion, an appointment she is accompanied to by none other than Eddy Hale—something which there is no mention of in the film.
Speaking of Eddy and Catherine’s relationship, they never kiss or have sex in the book. I liked that they never pursued anything in the book because it felt almost made their relationship feel more impactful and poignant. It wasn’t a sex thing, a lust thing. They truly had this connection, whether it was through the house, through a mutual understanding. They may have known they couldn’t be together, but there was this bond, this palpable longing that I thought just pulled at the heart strings. There’s a really good quote at one point in the novel when we are focusing more on Eddy’s perspective that says, “The point was, sometimes you just knew someone. That’s what he’d come to realize about the thing between them.” That felt way more real and important than, you know, climbing on top of him in the front yard and pulling his pants down, but, who am I to judge?
While there’s an emphasis on the relationship between Catherine and Eddy in the movie, there’s a significant deemphasis of the relationship between Eddy and Willis, and also, to some extent, on the relationship between George and Willis. There’s kind of a deemphasis on Willis in general, which is a damn shame, because I like Natalia Dyer and I thought she embodied the role really, really well. She was fierce, conflicted, flawed, angry. We needed more of her but we actually got less of her. In the book, Eddy and Willis are dating, while Willis carries on an affair with George and George cheats on Catherine with Willis and Eddy secretly falls in love with Catherine, and the whole thing is more convoluted.
And while we do see glimpses of George openly and shamelessly cheating on Catherine with Willis, and while I think we do get a really good look at what a shitty person George is in the movie, I’ll have you know:he’s actually an even shittier person in the book. I know, it doesn’t seem possible, but trust me, it’s true. Perhaps it’s because we get more time with him in the book, or more likely, because we get more of a glimpse of his perspective and a look inside his mind, but God, he is really awful, just a depraved person, and easy to hate. So easy to hate I actually found myself almost boiling over with rage at what a piece of shit he was at some points. There’s the ongoing affair with Willis, there’s his cavalier attitude toward lying to Catherine saying that he thinks she deserves it, there’s a scene where he overpowers Willis and cuts her hair off short and misshapen in an effort to dehumanize and humiliate her, there’s more intentional scenes of physical abuse toward Catherine, we delve a little more into his forgery of his recommendation letter for his professorial job and how he never actually completed his PhD program—there’s just, it’s a lot. It’s a whole lot. Conversely to Cathy’s character, there is zero sympathy garnered for George on this journey. I hate him so, so much.
One scene I was really glad they kept in the movie was the one where the librarian cheekily tells Catherine that the overdue book she found in her husband’s car was checked out in Willis’s name. She’s got her back. This woman is good looking out.
I have seen some reviewers who say they don’t really understand or like how there is so much emphasis on the marital strife aspect. I am thinking maybe they wanted more of a ghost story and more of the supernatural element (which I’ll touch on in a second), but I have to admit, not only do I not agree, but I don’t really understand why you don’t want that aspect or wouldn’t see the purpose of that aspect. It’s kind of the whole driving force behind everything here. I mean, the whole reason Cathy ends up murdered in the first place is because of George and the general facts of him being a giant piece of shit and depraved human, but it’s also what isolates her and makes her connect to the spirits of the Hale house/Vayle house and it adds to the sheer terror. This is a ghost story in some senses, but really, this isn’t a ghost story. It’s a thriller. And I think a good portion of the absolute terror and fear that is brought to the forefront here is in the way George treats Cathy and how apparent it is that she is completely alone. She is so isolated. She has no allies, and no way out, so she is just trapped in this terrible marriage and this terrifying situation. The darkness of that settling on your shoulders as you watch this film or read this novel is just overpowering. To me, the scariest scene of the movie and the book alike was the one when Cathy is trying to leave him, and he catches her and flies into a rage, taking the suitcases from the car and throwing her out in the cold. Now in the book, this is done far earlier and she continues to stay for a little while longer, which is perhaps even more terrifying, but it hits the same in the movie. The scene where he is dragging her toward the front door and she is grabbing for the phone and trying to escape—if you don’t see the absolute terror in that, then I guess I’m both sorry, and also grateful for you that you’re not able to empathize with something like that.
And finally (I know, this has been a lot, and honestly props to you if you have read this far. It turns out I had a lot to say about this), we have the supernatural/paranormal aspect. For fans of the spoopy, it’s probably the favorite part or aspect for a lot of us, and it’s played a little different in each form (and played wayyyy up in the trailer, IMO, which is perhaps why some people were let down—as usual, the trailer reeled them in for something that just wasn’t there). I loved the supernatural underlyings, but I think they were definitely more subtle in the book. I really liked the way they were portrayed in the book, how Catherine would feel a presence, sometimes sense that Ella was there with her, and how she found her rings on the kitchen window. This was kept the same in the movie, but I liked the scene where she found the rings in the book because it wasn’t right after she moved in. It was a little while later, as if Ella had left them there for her, as a sign or some kind of offering. Also, in the book they mention that it should have been impossible because they are certain that Ella was buried wearing her rings, so it gives a little more weight to the moment, but I still liked how it was played in the movie, and how Eddy tells her to keep them and it seems to strengthen the bond between the women somehow.
The movie definitely leaned further into the supernatural side of things, which I think worked in some spots and didn’t in others. In the book, there’s a mention of a long history at Hale farm and others having struggles, but there isn’t this whole other generation, and Cathy thinking the woman in the picture at the historical society is haunting her, and these spooky declarations in the family Bible about being damned and some implication of some kind of curse. It’s just the bond between the previous mother who lived in the house and the current mother living in the house. I liked it better without all the “damned” stuff, but that seemed like a good way to get people interested, anyway. Also in the book, Cathy never does a séance where she connects with the spirit in the house. In fact, George does a séance while he is at a party with Bram and Justine which Cathy doesn’t attend, and after all his declarations of being a non-believer and chastising Cathy not to talk about ghosts, he feels he sees something, which almost somehow feels like more of a betrayal to Cathy and honestly just kind of a dick move when he knew she’d been wanting to do something like that. That being said, I thought the séance in the movie was cheesy and overdone, which felt really out of place in an otherwise understated and quietly spooky story—but I suppose that’s what we can expect from “Hollywood”, right?
There were some moments in the movie where I thought the supernatural aspects being played up worked in the film’s favor, and one of them is definitely the glimpses of the ghost where we see her lingering behind Cathy but Cathy doesn’t. (There’s a shot right before the 28 minute mark where she walks past the hallway and we see the ghost but she doesn’t that I actually had to rewind and watch again.) I also really enjoyed the moment at the end where we see both Ella and Cathy as ghosts kind of lingering and watching over the house.
And speaking of endings, the book and the movie end both the same and differently. In the book and the movie, George finds out that they’re onto him and takes his boat out to basically find his reckoning on the water, so to speak. The way this was portrayed in the movie was stunning, as he sees his own reddened version of the painting he was haunted by in class earlier (which is The Valley of the Shadow and Death by George Inness). Beautiful shot, cool idea. I really liked it.
While he dies this way in the book, it’s not until years and years and years later. He gets way with Catherine’s murder for decades, until he is a feeble old man in the nursing home, and the case gets reopened because, in a poetic turn of events, Willis becomes the DA and delves back into it. Right before this, Franny, as an adult who is finishing her residency to become a doctor, returns to the family homestead to clean out their things before a new family moves in. There, she reencounters her old babysitter Cole, and Franny is actually the one who digs up additional evidence that makes it possible for Willis to reopen the case. So this is what I mean by the novel being sprawling. We really follow every aspect of this story and for a very long time, over multiple generations.
For the record on the title change, two of the major themes in the book are the work of painter George Inness and theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg. They are constantly referred back to, and while touched on in the films, those who didn’t read the book may not realize that a lot of the prevalent themes and ideas in the movie are pulled from these influences in the novel. The title of the movie is drawn from Swedenborg’s book, Heaven and the World of Spirits and Hell From Things Heard and Seen (which Floyd gifts to George and we later see Catherine reading) and the title of the book comes from a quote where George is thinking about the landscape before him in terms of Inness’s work: “what Inness would call an ideal composition, a vague and conniving frontier where all things cease to appear”.
I guess the short version of this is: I liked the book and the movie. I think they both have their strengths and their weaknesses. I think there were some changes made to the movie that I totally understand and some that I found much more questionable. Overall, I think the book was better, but I appreciate, for the most part, the vision the filmmakers had for this work. But if you watched this movie or want to or you liked it, this is one case where I will implore you: please, please read the book. There’s just so much…more. There’s so much more to it, it delves so deep, it’s so intricate. There’s so much more background and build up. There are some heart wrenching, really well written little moments in the book which are lost in translation to the screen.
I know—this has been a lot. I really, really had a lot to say about this and had to get it all out. I had to. I could actually say even more, but no one is going to read it. If you already even read all this, I sincerely appreciate you, and I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on this topic, and if you came here looking for anything specific, I hope you found it. If you didn’t, let me know! Leave me a comment or hit me up on Instagram. Especially if you’ve read this book and also watched the movie and want to compare notes! I don’t know anyone else who has read this yet.
Talk to you soon! <3