Summary

• The "Moonlight Man" from Gerald's Game is based on real-life killer Ed Gein, known for gruesome crimes.
• Director Mike Flanagan successfully adapted Stephen King's "unfilmable" Gerald's Game into a haunting horror movie.
• The chilling twist in Gerald's Game reveals the true identity of the Crypt Keeper, who terrorizes the protagonist.

The Crypt Keeper in Gerald's Game — AKA the "Moonlight Man" — is based on a notorious real-life killer. From the moment that Stephen King broke through with his first published novel Carrie, production companies have rushed to adapt his books for movies and TV. This naturally began with Brian DePalma's haunting version of Carrie. However, in 2017, a young director named Mike Flanagan took on his first Stephen King adaptation with a movie that some called unfilmable. This was Gerald's Game, and it remains a haunting horror movie.

Gerald's Game stars Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood as a married couple, Jessie and Gerald. They arrive at an isolated cabin, where Gerald wants to play a kinky game to spice up their failing relationship. She initially agrees. However, after he ties Jessie to a bed, they have a heated argument. Jessie kicks Gerald in self-defense, and he suffers a heart attack and dies. Jessie remains chained to the bed with no hope of rescue, and that is when the Moonlight Man shows up and her real nightmare begins.

Gerald's Game is available to stream on Netflix.

Who Is Crypt Keeper From Gerald's Game

The "Moonlight Man" Visited Jessie As She Was Helplessly Chained To The Bed

Gerald's Game was helmed by Mike Flanagan, one of the most prolific genre directors of recent years. He has become the go-to director for Stephen King adaptations, with Gerald's Game Doctor Sleep, and the upcoming The Life of Chuck. Many Stephen King readers believed Gerald's Game to be borderline unfilmable, but Flanagan managed to find a way to make the concept cinematic. The movie sees Jessie chained to the bed where she believes she is visited by a giant man dubbed the "Moonlight Man," who appears to represent death coming to collect her.

There are, however, hints that the Crypt Keeper is real, including a news report about a grave robber in the area during the opening scene and bloody footprints on the floor after he leaves. After Jessie finally escapes by degloving her hand, she confronts the Moonlight Man and pops her wedding ring in his bag of trinkets. In the final scenes of Gerald's Game, Jessie has found the strength to come to terms with her past, including being molested by her father, and launched a foundation for those who have also suffered sexual abuse.

Stephen King published Gerald's Game in 1992.

What Is Crypt Keeper Based On?

Ed Gein Has Influenced Several Horror Movies

The big twist of Gerald's Game is that The Moonlight Man was real. Jessie learns her visitor is Raymond Andrew Joubert, a man the press dubs the "Crypt Creeper." Joubert suffers from a disorder known as acromegaly and is played by Carel Struycken (Twin Peaks). Gerald's Game Crypt Creeper earned his name from digging up graves to steal from the dead while molesting corpses. The Crypt Keeper from Gerald's Game is based on real-life killer Ed Gein, who murdered two women in the 1950s.

This ending was not a Flanagan creation but was part of Stephen King's novel.

Ed Gein also exhumed the graves of the recently deceased and made objects out of their body parts. His disturbing crimes became so infamous they would later inspire movie villains like Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. The fact that the Crypt Keeper was real has been one of the few controversial elements of Gerald's Game, as many readers and viewers alike believe the twist wasn't necessary — though this doesn't change the fact that both he and the killer he's based on, Ed Gein, are harrowing figures.

Other Mike Flanagan Projects Inspired By Real Events

Mike Flanagan Looks At Real-World Horrors In His Movies

Mike Flanagan has mostly stuck to horror, and most of his movies and TV shows have been book adaptations. When it comes to Gerald's Game, the Ed Gein influence was already in Stephen King's novel. Doctor Sleep, also directed by Flanagan, is purely a sequel to The Shining, so doesn't ring true to real life much beyond the author's original inspiration for the location.

However, some of Mike Flanagan's non-Stephen King movies might have had some real-life influences. Some obvious movies were 100% fiction, such as the supernatural horror thriller Oculus, Hush, and the sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, although it is based on a real board game.

That leads to Mike Flanagan's most popular works — his miniseries made mostly for Netflix. The first of these is The Haunting of Hill House. This is based on Shirly Jackson's masterpiece novel, and she based her book on real-life paranormal investigators and their encounters. Not only that, but Jackson (and Flanagan) based the home on the supposedly haunted Winchester Estate. Based on the works of Henry James, The Haunting of Bly Manor was a work of complete fiction, but this led to an original miniseries, Midnight Mass.

According to the author, those movies were based on a true story about cancer patients who started a "Midnight Club" to discuss his books.

Flanagan wanted to create a vampire story similar to Stephen King's Salem's Lot. This ended up as Midnight Mass. The miniseries is not based on a real story, but the themes are based on real events, focusing on his childhood as an altar boy at parishes on Governors Island in New York and Maryland (via CNET). "Midnight Mass has been in my head since before I had a career," Flanagan said, revealing that he was the avatar of Riley Flynn in the story.

Midnight Club is another adaptation, this one on a Christopher Pike book. According to the author, those movies were based on a true story about cancer patients who started a "Midnight Club" to discuss his books. Pike dedicated the book to one of the young patients, basing the character of IIonka after her. It is clear that many of Flanagan's works have some basis in reality to them, such as Gerald's Game, but few pull villains from the real world because his fictional demons are scary enough as they are.