Stephen King has more than 200 short stories to his name (!), but the one that truly rattled me was “The Jaunt,” which effectively combines sci-fi and horror tropes to create a deliciously scary tale. This is one of those shorts that seem to be trudging a familiar path until you’re hit square in the face with a horrific twist, something that King rarely employs as an author who trickles down fear and suspense. While “The Jaunt” doesn’t have as many adaptations as it should, it is still widely acclaimed (along with other choice entries from his “Skeleton Crew” collection, including “Survivor Type” and “The Mist”). If we had to choose another King short story that deserves a feature adaptation, it would undoubtedly be “The Man in the Black Suit,” which won the World Fantasy Award and the O. Henry Award in 1995.
King often peppers his short story collections with notes and anecdotes — for this particular one, he wrote that it is a homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” a tale that is soaked in the contradictions of Puritan culture (while still struggling to break out of the ideological mold). That said, the exact inspirations behind “The Man in the Black Suit” can be traced back to what a friend of King’s said about his Grandpa sighting the Devil in the woods. As outlandish as this sounds, the power of this anecdote lies in the strangeness of the alleged encounter, where the devil’s truly in the details (no pun intended). King was deeply inspired by it despite finding the writing process cumbersome, as some “stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.”
“The Man in the Black Suit” is very much a devil at the crossroads story, one that places us firmly in the old narrator’s shoes as he guides us through his strange memories. We do have one adaptation of the tale so far, namely E. Nicholas Mariani’s eponymous short film, but it fails to capture the raw terror evoked by King’s original. So, which aspects of the story would a feature benefit from?
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The Man in the Black Suit taps into a primal fear to create tension
The titular entity in The Man in the Black Suit is similar to what Pennywise represents in It – Warner Bros. Pictures
Anecdotal ghost stories can be scary in some contexts, especially if you’ve experienced them firsthand as a child or are unable to come up with a logical explanation for whatever you’ve witnessed. This is what nine-year-old Gary experiences after encountering a frightening presence in the woods, which appears somewhat human at first but slowly reveals itself to be otherworldly.
This is terrifying, especially for a child who gradually begins to detect these inhuman features, which include eyes without irises or pupils (or whites for that matter) and shark-like teeth. Some aspects of this monster’s manner of speaking are similar to that of Pennywise from “It”, who also draws his words out and mocks his victims moments before nabbing them. From a creature design perspective, this titular monster could be turned into a memorable antagonist in a feature adaptation without the use of CGI that looks cheap or underwhelming.
The setting is, quite expectedly, Maine, but the time period in the story is a pre-modern one, and this vagueness adds to the believability of the events. There are more thematic layers to Gary’s story, as the encounter occurs right after the death of his brother, who got stung by a bee. The arbitrariness of the tragedy haunted Gary ever since, which might explain the psychological implications of meeting the devil in the woods (as opposed to god, who was completely indifferent to a child’s death from Gary’s perspective). But the man in the black suit isn’t a source of comfort, as he immediately taps into Gary’s greatest fears, which include the sudden death of his parents. The man jeers, threatens, and attacks him, trying to lay claim to the child’s soul just because he can do so.
A feature adaptation with a psychological bent can definitely enrich the layers of horror here, as “The Man in the Black Suit” is a story that brims with potential. I urge anyone interested enough to read it, as it has the ability to make you feel a lot within a very short span of time.
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