As I said at the beginning, this is a psychological horror drama. Psychological portrayal is very important. This is the source of creating horror and the difficulty of adapting into a movie. But TV dramas, obviously, pay more attention to the depiction of the characters in the past to try to enrich the image of each character and the legitimacy of their "death sentence".
The original work is not perfect, as I said, there are very few inferences, mainly in the dialogue and psychology between Doctor Armstrong, the judge, Lombard and the police. In the original book, Doctor Armstrong is a very important character. If I am not mistaken, the adaptation of Dr. Armstrong’s character lies in the fact that the director also discovered some loopholes in the original work of Granny. In the original book, Armstrong is a smart and calm person. He and Lombard were the ones who were bored and investigated at first, and later joined the police. It is difficult for such a person to accept that he will finally believe the judge's advice and help him complete a series of fake deaths without doubt. This is a loophole in Grandma's original work. So the director adapted Armstrong into a complete idiot, still a bit neurotic.
An interesting episode is that after the housekeeper was killed by an axe, Vera (the female secretary) actually lost control. He pointed to the room and shouted that there could be no bees. The doctor slapped her to wake her up. To some extent, Vera’s character and the doctor’s character have been reversed. Although this made the doctor's help to the judge more persuasive, it inevitably opened another loophole at the same time.
Vera's character is very interesting in the original book. Most of the time she persuaded herself to stay calm, but the bee out of control and the long description of her crimes and hallucinations can reveal her hidden neuroticism. It is such a girl who finally chooses to commit suicide in peace.
Vera has always been the one who cares about the poem most besides the murderer among the ten people. After the steward's death, the person who read the poem is more likely to be her rather than Armstrong. Just imagine, if Armstrong was so familiar with that poem, would he not be a little vigilant when he was called by the judge to go to the beach? (The poem at the time of Armstrong’s death corresponds to: Four little Niggers going out to sea. A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.) It
weakens the atmosphere of horror and jealous reasoning, and the rest becomes a film of ten people A boring TV series of getting together and waiting to die. I admit that my scoring is more demanding, but using such a TV series to commemorate grandma I think I still fail.
View more about And Then There Were None reviews