10 Stephen King Stories That Wouldn't Work As Movies
9. The Sun Dog
Some of King's stories, like The Stand, need 1.000 pages to tell the whole tale. Some are small, slices of life within King's demented world. That's where The Sun Dog fits in. One of the novellas from Four Past Midnight, The Sun Dog is about 15 year-old Kevin Delevan. He receives a Polaroid camera for his birthday.
Kevin realizes that regardless of where the camera is aimed, it always takes the same picture; a street with a white fence and a black dog in the distance. Kevin turns the camera over to junk shop owner Pop Merrill, who continues to use the camera. With each shot, the dog in the distance gets closer. Eventually the dog finally pushes itself through the pictures membrane and into our world. Kevin is able to turn the Sun dog to stone by taking it's picture with another Polaroid camera.
Frankly, there just isn't enough to justify the Hollywood treatment. So much filler would have to be added that, again, it would be missing the point. The Sun Dog isn't meant to be epic. It's meant to shine a dim, flickering light on one small corner of King's universe. Like Reese cups, they are great in small doses, but you don't need fifteen of them.