Netflix’s ‘Train Dreams’ Brings Denis Johnson to the Screen

Netflix is betting big on serious literary fiction with Train Dreams, a spare, haunting adaptation of Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella. Directed by Clint Bentley and co-written with Greg Kwedar, the film stars Joel Edgerton as railroad laborer Robert Grainier and has already drawn praise on the festival circuit for its lyrical, Malick-like visuals and meditative pacing.

A Difficult Novella to Bring to Life

First published in The Paris Review in 2002 and later released as a standalone book in 2011, Train Dreams is a brief read that feels vast in scope. Johnson, who lived in Idaho before his death in 2017, rooted Grainier’s life in the forests and rail lines of the Inland Northwest, a landscape the film recreates with sweeping images of trees, fog, and track. Early reviews highlight the movie’s hushed voice-over and contemplative tone, which echo Johnson’s minimalist prose while giving viewers more conventional emotional beats.

Slate notes that the film leans heavily on Grainier’s grief over the deaths of his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their young daughter, reshaping the story into a focused tale of a father’s sorrow. Some of the novella’s strangest detours—the grisly encounter with a dying tramp, the brutal fate of Kootenai Bob, and the uncanny “wolf-girl” who may or may not be Grainier’s child—are trimmed or softened, trading Johnson’s eerie, unresolved texture for clearer narrative throughlines.

Netflix’s High-Stakes Literary Bet

Bentley and Kwedar arrive with serious prestige credentials after their work on the Oscar-nominated Sing Sing, and Netflix has backed them accordingly. The streamer acquired Train Dreams in a high–teen–million-dollar deal after its Sundance premiere, a price that signals strong confidence in the film’s awards and prestige potential, according to reporting from the Spokesman-Review. Shot in Washington state to evoke Johnson’s Inland Northwest, the movie joins other festival-bound Netflix literary titles this year, including the latest Knives Out installment, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

For readers, part of the intrigue is how faithfully the film can translate Johnson’s signature blend of danger, chaos, and moral ambiguity, familiar from his other work, into a quiet period drama. As early reviews in the UK press point out, the result is beautiful and moving, even if some of the novella’s odd, tufted mysteries are inevitably smoothed out.

Whether you come to Train Dreams as a longtime Denis Johnson devotee or as a Netflix browser stumbling on a somber railroad drama, this adaptation marks a rare moment: a major streamer entrusting real money and marquee stars to a 90-minute, deeply interior story. It may not capture every strange glimmer of the book, but it pushes the door open a little wider for uncompromising literary adaptations on the small screen.