10 Stephen King Stories That Deserve Film Adaptations
3. Joyland
When Joyland begins, readers could be forgiven for thinking that it seems like a rather cliché horror story. Set in an eerie amusement park, the novel seems more like an adults-only Scooby Doo episode than anything else, but as the plot evolves and King begins to weave his magic, the story turns into something completely unique.
The plot follows a student, Devin Jones, who signs up for a summer job at the local amusement park, where the in-house fortune teller predicts some interesting experiences ahead for the young recruit. As the summer continues and Devin befriends other staff members, he learns that the haunted house attraction is genuinely haunted by the ghost of a girl who died there many years before. He investigates, uncovering the amusement park's dark past and noticing some strange connections between the death of the girl and some other murders in the area.
Despite the fact that old amusement parks and fairgrounds seem to be popular settings for horror stories, there haven't been too many films set in these locations, and the deep story of Joyland is filled with enough surprises and unexpected developments to sustain a gripping feature-length film.