Horror icon Stephen King’s short story collection Night Shift has produced a string of classic adaptations, leading some fans to wonder why one of its strongest stories has never become a movie. Stephen King’s prolific output means that the writer’s work is almost always receiving new adaptions. In 2022 alone, numerous Stephen King projects will hit the screen, with some of these movies and shows being original adaptations, some being spinoffs of recent hits, and some being remakes of earlier adaptations.
However, even though many King adaptations are successful with critics and fans alike, some of the horror icon’s most memorable works have never made it to the screen. Sometimes, it is was to see why a Stephen King story has no big-budget live-action adaptation, whether it is due to graphic content (like the infamous “Survivor Type”), the cosmic scale of the story’s horror, or both (like “The Library Policeman”). However, in other cases, it can be harder to discern why a commercial, scary Stephen King story has not yet received a movie version.
Take, for example, “I Know What You Need” from the iconic early Stephen King short story collection Night Shift. Unlike many of Night Shift’s gorier, more action-forward stories, “I Know What You Need” is a more intimate brand of horror than King’s usual fare. This may be why the story still has no screen adaptation, as the small scale of the tale would not necessarily lend itself well to a feature-length movie version. However, “I Know What You Need”’s creepy plot still deserves to reach new fans, and a small screen adaptation could be the perfect way to make this happen.
Stephen King’s “I Know What You Need” Explained
The plot of “I Know What You Need” follows a college student, the glamorous Elizabeth, who gradually grows more and more enamored with a fellow student who is attempting to woo her, the unassuming Ed. However, after the mysterious death of Elizabeth's fiancee, Elizabeth's savvy roommate does some digging into Ed’s past and discovers a horrifying truth. In the denouement of King’s Night Shift short story, Elizabeth sneaks into Ed’s apartment and finds out the creepy secret behind his uncanny ability to meet her needs. Horrified, she leaves him on the spot—but not before wondering whether his attention was worth its terrible cost. Much more meditative than many of King's typically bombastic finales, the story works just as well as an unsettling fable as it does full-fledged horror.
The Horror Of “I Know What You Need”
The ending of “I Know What You Need” reveals that Elizabeth’s seemingly charming would-be suitor has been using black magic to control her life and predict her needs. Thus, he has been manipulating her into falling for him, starting with convincing her she wanted ice cream and eventually graduating to engineering the circumstances that caused her fiancee’s fatal car crash. The horror comes from a more intimate sort of betrayal than King’s typical homicidal/supernatural antagonists like IT’s killer clown Pennywise and, even though the antagonist does kill her former fiancee, Ed does surprisingly give up once it is clear that Elizabeth will now never return his feelings. In the end, Elizabeth’s roommate notes that Ed’s wooing of her has been more akin to rape than courtship and the story offers a dark rumination on how easily coercion can be masked by flattery and deceit.
Has “I Know What You Need” Ever Been Adapted?
Although the short story was once turned into a Dollar Baby short film, “I Know What You Need” has never been brought to life as a mainstream feature-length project or anthology show episode. Despite King’s fellow Night Shift story Children of the Corn gaining a movie adaptation (and a string of increasingly silly sequels), this more subtle and insidious horror story has not yet been seen on screen save for its low-budget indie incarnation. However, while the story is deservedly well-liked by reviewers and fans, it is easy to work out why there is no movie version of “I Know What You Need.”
Why “I Know What You Need” Has No Movie Version (Yet)
While “I Know What You Need” is an effective example of tension building and a masterfully creepy piece of horror fiction, the somewhat flat ending (the girl confronts her suitor and leaves him heartbroken, without any physical fight or dramatic defeat) would not translate well to the more dynamic medium of television or cinema. Like King’s later period horror story “The Man In The Black Suit,” the action of “I Know What You Need” is more effective as an insular literary experience. The tale may well be difficult to realize onscreen since there is little in the way of dramatic, dynamic action, and it mostly unfolds at a languid (although unsettling) pace. The slowness of the story allows Ed to win over both Elizabeth and the reader gradually, but could well become tiresome and repetitive if turned into a big-screen experience.
How “I Know What You Need” Could Work Onscreen
Even though the ending makes for a fitting conclusion to Elizabeth’s character arc on paper, the tale simply doesn’t have enough action to sustain a movie. Rather than add in a bloody (and redundant) battle between the heroine and villain, making “I Know What You Need” a successful Stephen King TV show instead would ameliorate this issue. While TV budgets have increased over the last few years and the medium is how to more ambitious stories than ever, television is still the go-to format for smaller, more intimate stories. As such, as either a standalone anthology horror episode or a slower miniseries version of the story, a television iteration of "I Know What You Need” could work. A miniseries would give viewers time to get in Elizabeth’s head and would allow Ed to win over the audience the same way he wins over the object of his affections, through a string of strange small gestures.
Meanwhile, a more fast-paced anthology horror outing (like an episode of Shudder’s acclaimed Creepshow revival) could condense the action of the tale. This would limit the number of viewers who guessed Ed’s evil intentions before the big twist and could mean the creators would not need to pad out the brief original story. Whichever style of small-screen adaptation the Stephen King story receives, “I Know What You Need” deserves an incarnation worthy of the story’s insidious, unsettling genius.