This Collider article counts down ten horror films it considers "perfect" adaptations of source novels, arguing that the best examples either match or deepen the books they're drawn from rather than simply borrowing a premise. It opens by noting the difficulty of writing effective horror fiction and the inherent subjectivity of horror as a genre, before ranking the films that the author believes achieve near-universal acclaim as adaptations.

Topping the lower end of the list is Robert Wise's 1963 film "The Haunting", adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel "The Haunting of Hill House", praised for its restrained, ambiguous approach to depicting the supernatural and cited by Martin Scorsese as one of the scariest horror films ever made. Also featured is Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's "Misery", starring Kathy Bates in an Oscar-winning role as Annie Wilkes—the only Academy Award ever won by a King film adaptation—alongside James Caan as captive novelist Paul Sheldon.