The novel was waaaay waaaay better than the movie.
- The homeless man is actually another escaped inmate from the bus Michael was on. He was also a serial killer, Dr. Sartain experimenting on both of them to see if evil could spread to others if they were kept together, resulting in the homeless man worshipping Michael.
- And we establish that Corey was not the first-person Michael possessed with his evil in those four years. The film leaves you to wonder if Corey might come back, but in the book, Corey isn’t really the thing I was worried about.
- Michael didn’t stop killing after that night in 2018. Michael even gets to be a vigilante/antihero of sorts in one part. He kills a lot more people after, and we follow him on on his journey leading up to the pipe.
- In the film, Jeremy’s rudeness toward Corey comes off very sudden, after starting friendly. The book reveals Jeremy starts being a douche the moment his parents leave, manipulating Corey into letting him watch The Thing, with the threat of telling his parents he’s a bad babysitter. These scenes were cut for time, but better show the context of that relationship, leading up to Corey flipping out at him.
- Corey's mom is a complete and utter monster causing the death of her own baby brother.
- In the years after Kills, Laurie leads a militia of sorts to try and find Michael. She becomes obsessed, while Frank learns to let go of his rage during physical therapy to fix his legs, causing a rift with him and Laurie, explaining why they haven’t spoken much leading up to Ends.
- The book chronicles events through all four years the trilogy takes place, as well as jumping back to the 80s, as well as jumping past the trilogy. Allowing Several characters from the trilogy to return, including Karen and Loomis (who’s in a Kmart parking lot in one part which was amusing to imagine). We get a scene with Julian and Allyson, and even the girl who made out with Cameron at the dance, gets about two chapters worth of epilogue.
Ultimately, the book feels more like a miniseries about what happened not only between between 2018 and 2022, but from 1978 and 2022. Not treating it like a time jump, but like four years of story, and vignettes as to what the town and its residents went through. The novel as a whole feeling like the conclusion of a 44 year story, that makes the trilogy feel satisfying.