Is the book always better than the movie/tv adaptation? There are a few exceptions to this rule. And obviously everyone is going to have their own opinions about this. Personally, I think the Hunger Games movies are better than the mediocre books. Fight Club the movie is also much better than the book. From my experience, when a book is really great, it can be a difficult feat attempting to improve upon it for the screen (be that screen big or small). And when a book is great, sometimes adaptations feel too beholden to the sacred source material.
So then it seems like, surprisingly, maybe the most promising adaptations are the ones that come from source material that is either not so great or even… bad? Which is maybe why I was so interested in watching Netflix’s adaptation of Sarah Pinborough’s novel Behind Her Eyes. I read the book shortly after it was released in 2017, and well, it was kind of a mess. Enjoyable, but ultimately ridiculous. What would a six-episode Netflix series be able to do with this material? I was curious to find out.
Spoilers to follow!
Behind Her Eyes is a novel that ends up being pretty faithful to its source material in a lot of ways. The six-part series (and the book) is about Louise, a single mother who is still getting over her divorce when she runs into a handsome stranger at a bar. They share a drink, an electric conversation, and a kiss. And then he scurries off. Plot twist: the next morning, Louise finds out this dude is her new boss. And he’s married.
His name is David, and his wife’s name is Adele. Before long, Louise finds herself tied up in their marriage. Adele is new to the city and has no friends, and so Louise quickly becomes her only friend in London. But Louise still has feelings for David, and David isn’t happy in his marriage. And so they start sleeping with each other. Things get even messier when Louise learns more about how unhealthy David and Adele’s relationship truly is. But who is bringing the toxicity into the relationship? Is David an abusive and controlling husband? Is Adele mentally ill?
Plot twist: Adele used to be in a rehab clinic, and there she made a best friend named Rob. Rob meets David and falls in love with him and falls in love with Adele’s life. And so he swaps bodies with Adele and then kills her while she’s in his body. So this whole time “Adele” has been Rob. At the end of this movie, Adele stages her suicide and then swaps bodies with Louise and takes her place. All so she can “start over” with David, the love of his/her life. I’m not sure what pronouns Rob prefers as Adele/Louise.
If all of that seems wild and out of nowhere, you’re correct. Especially in the book, this ending came out of nowhere. If you look up reviews of this book on Goodreads, a lot of people will commend this book for the plot twist that “came out of nowhere.” But when it literally makes no sense… is it really a plot twist? It’s more like a trick. There was no indication in the book that anything supernatural was going on until the final 1/3 of the story (and maybe that’s generous). This is a book that also relies a lot on the domestic thriller trope “is this woman just crazy?” which is problematic for a whole stack of reasons. Reader, I hated this ending.
But, like I said, I was curious to see how the adaptation would deal with this weird ass plot. I’ll just come out and say I think they did some work to try to salvage this ending, but not enough. In the book, Rob having feelings for David came out of left field, and you don’t really know about that at all until the last couple of pages of the book. In the series, Rob says very clearly as early as the second episode that he is gay, so the set up is there. Also, because television is a visual medium (duh), we get visuals of what it looks like when Rob and Adele are “practicing” controlling their consciousness and when Louise does it later. So we see that they’re physically leaving their bodies earlier on in the story as well.
With that being said, there’s still so much that feels unearned. And more importantly, so much that feels unnecessarily opaque just to conceal the eventual twists. Adele and David have several conversations with one another in which they don’t say much of anything, because if either of them said what they really meant, major “plot twists” would be revealed. So there’s a lot of, “You know about the thing. The thing we share that we both know that we can’t tell anyone.” No one talks like this.
I think something I’ve realized from watching this show (and reading this book) is that sometimes thrillers are a little too married to the idea of a plot twist. Behind Her Eyes relies on its unpredictable ending. If you look at the Goodreads entry on this book, the first thing it says is, “Why is everyone talking about the ending of Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes?” But here’s the thing. If you need a plot twist to make your story good, then it’s not a good story. And if you need to hide lots of things from the viewer/reader in order to get your plot twist to work, then it’s not a good plot twist.
And that’s ultimately the problem with Behind Her Eyes as a story. And there’s really nothing an adaptation can do to fix that.
There’s one more potentially problematic thing about the show that I have yet to mention. I do appreciate that they cast a woman of color as our protagonist Louise, and actress Simona Brown does an excellent job in this role. However, how are we supposed to feel about the fact that Louise is groomed by Adele so that she can eventually take over her body? And when we think about all of the plot twists at the end of this story, what we essentially have is a white man taking control of a Black woman’s body. That doesn’t sit well with me.
The book itself doesn’t specify the race of any of its characters, as far as I can remember. And I understand the impulse for colorblind casting. But we don’t live in a colorblind world. And having such a power dynamic between white characters and a Black woman without any sort of commentary is irresponsible.
With all of this being said, I still felt drawn to this show out of curiosity, and the curiosity kept me engaged fully throughout the show’s six episodes. I am glad it wasn’t drawn out much longer than that. I think the actors all did a great job and did the best they could with the material they were given. But there’s only so much you can do when the story you’re handed is this ludicrous.
If you want to check out Behind Her Eyes for yourself, it’s now streaming on Netflix.