15 Horror Movies You Probably Didn't Know Were Based On Books

Before The Hunger Games (and after Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Stephen King's The Long Walk) there was the ultra-violent Battle Royale.

Released in 2000 Kinji Fukasaku's film brings the pages of Koushun Takami's novel to life. In a dystopian future the Japanese government randomly selects a class of ninth-graders to face off in an all-out death tournament where only one can survive.

The novel was completed in 1996, but didn't see the light of day until 1999 due to its controversial content. This is in a huge part because when it gets violent it doesn't pull a single punch. These kids butcher each other, and some are so good at it that its as if they were just waiting for the opportunity to kill without consequence. It uses this extreme violence as a way of creating an incendiary critique of Japanese society at the time, taking a very clear stab at the government in particular for facilitating such a brutal contest.

Oddly enough, Takami hasn't published a single work since Battle Royale. Then again, when an author comes out swinging this hard, do they really need to do anything more? After all, you can't top perfection.