 The changes to the story were mostly superficial, and the adaptation generally mirrors the novella's tone. The television critic Matthew Baylis observed that the film creates unease and horror through distortions of reality, and that The Turn of the Screw is not a "screaming-banshees-and-horrible-corpses style of ghost story". The film utilises subtle horror, including details such as a broken doll on a window ledge, and the fact that viewers never discover certain elements of the story (for example, it is never revealed why the character Miles has been suspended from his boarding school). This, for Baylis, ties to the title of the film: "it's the writer who puts the screw in the hole and the best ones ask the audience to turn it themselves".
