While My Best Friend’s Exorcism is adapted from the Grady Hendrix novel of the same name, the horror-comedy movie does make a few vital changes to the source material. It is not unusual for adaptations to alter their source material. While some, like Stephen King’s miniseries version of The Shining, strive to be as faithful as possible, many more adaptations simply use the source material as a starting point to tell a related, but unique story with original plot twists and a different tone.
Amazon Prime’s adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism falls into the latter category, as the horror-comedy lightens the tone of Grady Hendrix’s novel while also making the story's action more dramatic. Following the fortunes of Abby and Gretchen, My Best Friend’s Exorcism tells the tale of two ordinary teenage girls whose lives are plunged into horror when one of them is possessed by a demon. While Hendrix’s book takes this idea relatively seriously, My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s movie adaptation has a little more fun with the premise.
The movie version of My Best Friend’s Exorcism makes a lot of surprising alterations to the source material while still keeping the most important elements of the story the same. Unlike The Invitation’s very, very loose Dracula retelling, both the book and the movie of My Best Friend’s Exorcism tell the same basic story in terms of plot. Abby and Gretchen get high with some friends, Gretchen is attacked by something in the woods, and, over the next few weeks, her behavior and appearance change. She becomes cruel and vindictive in a way that most adults and authority figures write off as petty teen drama, but her former best friend Abby recognizes it as demonic possession. Gretchen eventually seriously harms the two other members of their friend group, Glee and Margaret, before Abby conscripts the well-meaning but useless youth pastor Christian to help her with an exorcism. However, it is in this dramatic finale that My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s biggest movie changes take place.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism Changes Glee’s Story Completely
In the source novel, Glee harbors a secret crush on Father Morgan, a priest. As Stranger Things season 4’s Will storyline allowed the series to address the toxic social and cultural attitudes toward homosexuality that pervaded the 80s, My Best Friend’s Exorcism changes this storyline to Glee having a crush on her friend Margaret. In the movie, Gretchen convinces Glee to confess her attraction to Margaret, who coldly dismisses her with a homophobic slur. In contrast, the novel’s version of events is arguably even more unpleasant, as Gretchen exposes Glee’s crush on Father Morgan and causes her distraught friend to attempt suicide. Fortunately, Father Morgan saves her from death, but in both versions of the story, Gretchen’s former friendship with Glee is irreparably ruined by the actions of her demon-possessed self.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism Cut The Book’s Darkest Horror Moment
Much like My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s book counterpart features a sadder version of Glee’s subplot, the novel also features a darker storyline that the movie cuts completely. While My Best Friend’s Exorcism is far from a cliche 80s slasher movie, the novel does feature a body count thanks to the upsetting scene wherein the demon Andras (acting through Gretchen’s body) shoots Gretchen’s beloved dog Max dead shortly before the eponymous exorcism begins. The scene is clearly intended to show that Gretchen’s exorcism is necessary and overdue, but the death of a pet is always a tricky thing to pull off in terms of tone, and it is difficult to imagine the horror-comedy tone of My Best Friend’s Exorcism successfully navigating Gretchen shooting her family pet to death and laughing about it.
The Exorcism’s Location Is Different
In the novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s titular exorcism takes place in Gretchen’s plush family home. In the movie, the exorcism still begins there but, when Christian abandons Abby, Gretchen escapes her clutches and returns to the abandoned house by the lake where she first encountered the demon Andras and became possessed. In a reversal of The Shining’s Stephen King adaptation approach, the movie version of My Best Friend’s Exorcism then proceeds to make the somewhat ambiguous horror of the source novel much more literal. Where the book My Best Friend’s Exorcism originally implied that some story elements could have been imagined by Abby or Gretchen, the movie adaptation gives viewers a good look at the very real demon Andras.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism Movie Changes The Book’s Ending
In both the novel and the movie of My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Gretchen is saved not by religious scripture but instead by Abby relying on the power of friendship. However, the movie version of My Best Friend’s Exorcism takes this idea further. In a risky move that backfired for earlier horror movie adaptations (like Hulu’s woeful Clive Barker adaptation Books of Blood), My Best Friend’s Exorcism offers a literal depiction of the book’s potentially metaphorical demons. In the novel, Abby stands in Gretchen’s bedroom while her friend contorts, then she envisions the demon Andras in Hell, and finally, she comes to her friend’s aid as Gretchen successfully expels the demon. It is pretty clear that supernatural events have occurred but, crucially, it is only Abby who sees anything explicitly paranormal with her momentary glimpse of Andras.
Why My Best Friend's Exorcism Improves The Original Novel Ending
In contrast, in My Best Friend’s Exorcism's movie ending, the pair return to the house in the woods where Gretchen got possessed and Gretchen vomits up a moving, walking embodiment of the demon Andras. Like A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, the monster isn’t as hard to defeat in its physical form and Abby soon kills the small creature via some well-aimed perfume spray and a lighter. Thus, the movie version of My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s ending makes it much clearer that Gretchen was possessed by a literal demon and its existence wasn’t an extended metaphor or a way for the pair to process the trauma of teenage life. My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s demon is an entirely real, physically present monster that the duo team up to successfully banish. And the presence of a looming owl in the movie’s closing scenes even implies that Andras may still be able to return someday. Overall, My Best Friend’s Exorcism offers a more uplifting, less ambiguous, and less downbeat version of the novel’s darker, murkier version of the same story, in keeping with the movie's broader, goofier tone.