Secret Window

David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Panic Room and Spider-Man before turning to directing; this is his third film as director. One of those scripts leaks into it: the ocean footage from the night Mort cannot sleep is left over material from The Lost World. The source is Stephen King’s novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, from his 1990 collection Four Past Midnight. Two differences matter. In King’s text Mort has a real plagiarism behind him, a story taken at college from a more gifted rival; the film drops it, moving the accusation’s weight off the event and onto Johnny Depp’s face. Second, in the novella an armed outsider intervenes at the last moment and Mort dies. Koepp removed that, and the home release carries an alternate ending showing what the theatrical cut implies. Koepp also adds a character King did not write: the private investigator Ken Karsch, so Mort has someone to think aloud at. Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli wrote the score. Filming took place in Canada, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships around North Hatley and Lake Massawippi. A good fit if you would rather watch behaviour than incident, with almost everything resting on one house and Depp’s face. Not for a reader who loves the novella and expects the same ending; Koepp changed it.