 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 " . 
