There are more than a few cases where the movie based on the book is as good as or even better than the book. But this isn't normally the case. And this is for good reason. When you tell the same story in different mediums things do, in fact, work differently.
The difference between book and film is simply how much stuff you can cover. The story told in a book can be much grander, you can cover dozens or even hundreds of characters over generations of time. Each detail can be expounded upon, or it can take the sweep of centuries. The sheer size of a book can simply be far larger than that in a movie. Even television shows and miniseries tell much greater stories than a movie can. Because, after all you're talking about 90 to 250 minutes of time with a movie. In that time you must introduce the characters, establish the world, build to a climax, and wrap things up. You can end up trying to put dozens of different scenes in four TV episodes. Making it fit is, well, hard.
Another major reason movies often don't live up the book is the fact that we supply our own sets and characters for the books. If the book describes a beautiful woman then we supply our own idea of beauty. If it describes a creepy castle then we fill in the gaps with things that we find creepy. In a book, each one of us creates our own version of those things that suit us perfectly. This isn't true with a movie. In a movie they must hire a beautiful woman and design a castle that they feel is creepy. But, as with all such aesthetics, your mileage varies for this. Different people find different things scary, to different degrees. A hit for most people will be a miss for some, and when the atmosphere and meaning of the story depends upon these things working it is just so much harder.
All this being said, none of this stuff is insurmountable. It's just hard, sometimes it's much harder than people expect.
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