Nightbooks: Every Difference Between The Book & Movie

There are some major differences between the Nightbooks movie and the original book. Although Netflix’s family-friendly horror flick stays pretty loyal in concept to J.A. White’s source material, several style and backstory changes give the film a special atmosphere. As a result, the Nightbooks movie is a markedly different experience from the 2018 book.

In both the original book and Netflix’s Nightbooks movie, the story focuses on Alex (Winslow Fegley), a young boy kidnapped by Natacha (Krysten Ritter), a witch who forces him to write a scary story every night. In a grisly twist, it becomes clear that, if he fails to satisfy the witch’s demand for stories, she will kill him. In a bid to escape his fate, Alex plans to leave Natacha’s magical apartment together with Yasmin (Lidya Jewett), a slightly older girl, and Lenore, Natacha’s cat. The narrative charts the children’s attempts to thwart Natacha and return home.

Most of the changes made by the movie revolve around the characters’ backstories and attitudes. For instance, Yasmin is more escape-driven, and Lenore is more easily befriended. Another big change the movie made – perhaps the most important one – is to the story’s ending, which, unlike the book’s ending, leaves room for a sequel. Of course, there are also the obvious book-to-screen adaptation changes, which are necessary in order to fit a novel-long story into under two hours of runtime (two hours intense enough to have viewers debating if Nightbooks is too scary for children). To help audiences keep track, here are all the major differences between the Nightbooks book and movie.

Natacha’s Apartment Moves In The Nightbooks Movie

In the book, the witch’s apartment seems to be rooted in just one place – the town isn’t mentioned, but Alex and Yasmin live in the same apartment building. In the film, however, Alex lives in New York City, and Yasmin lives in Washington DC. When Alex meets Yasmin inside Natacha’s magic apartment, he finds out the apartment moves whenever it wants “fresh meat,” in Yasmin’s words. It later becomes clear that the apartment is controlled by Grizelda, a scary decrepit witch inspired by the Hansel and Gretel myth. It’s Grizelda that wants a scary story every night, and she’s the one that moves the apartment looking for children to kidnap. The apartment is also similar to Doctor Who‘s TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside (hosting a giant towering library in the case of Nightbooks.) This is the case in both the book and the movie, but only in the movie is the apartment magical enough to move.

Movie Yasmin is Determined to Escape

In the book, Yasmin likes baseball, cooking, and is dreaming about opening a restaurant. In the movie, she is passionate about science, and tinkers with Natacha’s potions (which she hates). Yasmin witnesses other children trying to escape in both stories, but in the movie, she attempts an escape herself, before joining Alex in escaping the apartment for good. When Yasmin tries to escape, her friend Claire gets punished for it (Natacha turns her into a statue, and Yasmin lives with the guilt afterward). The Nightbooks movie was right in giving more agency to Yasmin. Her escape attempt announces her intelligence and valuable contribution to Alex’s escape plan. She steals Natacha’s perfume bottle and sprays herself with the magic mist, opening the apartment’s exit to the real world. In the book, it’s Lenore who inhales the mist and helps the kids escape.

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Movie Alex Is An Only Child Betrayed By His Best Friend

One huge difference Netflix made is to Alex’s backstory. In the book, Alex has an older brother, John, and their relationship is a difficult one. And the reason for Alex wanting to destroy his nightbooks is not his best friend’s betrayal, but his school counselor, Mr. Calkins, who makes him believe he must be a disturbed kid for writing such stories. In the movie, however, Alex’s best friend Josh ditches his haunted-house-themed party to go to another kid’s birthday party. Alex ends up all alone at his own party, and the feelings of pain and abandonment lead him to Natacha’s apartment. These feelings are also the cause of his writer’s block. This change makes a lot of sense since it connects Alex’s motivation to Natacha’s backstory.

Natacha Has A Different Motivation In The Nightbooks Movie

In the Nightbooks movie ending, there’s a massive plot twist that reveals a very important aspect of Natacha’s past. After she escaped Grizelda’s terrifying house, she tried to come back home, but her parents had abandoned her. Having nowhere else to go, Natacha came back to Grizelda and succumbed to her own greed, becoming the witch she is today. In the book, Natacha never attempted to return home. Instead, she wanted to be a good witch and free all the kidnapped children. However, in both stories, Natacha lets her dark side take over and she begins kidnapping children herself.

It’s also worth mentioning that in the book, Natacha is described as dark-skinned with spiky hair, and the movie shows her as white with blue hair (not the most drastic book vs. movie difference). In both stories, Natacha reveals herself as Unicorn Girl, the girl who left clues in diaries that helped Alex write his scary stories. She was once a girl the apartment kidnapped, just like Alex, and the feelings of abandonment from her past connect better to Alex’s story than her backstory in the book.

Movie Lenore Is Less Creepy

Although the book pictures Lenore as a regular ginger cat, she has tiny human hands with four fingers and a thumb. This gives her a far creepier look than that of the sphynx cat in the Netflix movie. Moreover, although working against them at first, movie Lenore ends up helping Alex and Yasmin pretty early in the movie, when she sends Natacha to sleep so the two can escape. In the book, Lenore is more hostile, and only helps the kids escape at the very end of the story,

The Movie Ending Sets The Ground For A Sequel

Unlike the book, the Nightbooks movie ending leaves room for a sequel. The book ends with Natacha being defeated by Aunt Gris (Grizelda in the movie). Although it seems like this at first in the movie, Natacha survives, and her horrible laugh announces she is not finished causing trouble. There’s more: in the book, all the kids Natacha had turned into statues return to normal and get back to their families. This is not the case in the movie, so it’s likely Yasmin will try to revive her friend Claire and the other victims of Natacha in the Nightbooks sequel.

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