When you look at the “full cast and crew” on IMDB it says,

**Writing Credits (WGA)
Gary Paulsen … (book)

Bill Cain … (teleplay)**

I’m not familiar with Paulsen, but I bet I would have loved stuff like Hatchet. J-Ro’s comments on the book vs. the movie

Sarny’s other main house job is spitting tobacco juice on Callie’s roses to keep off the bugs — a rather vivid example of the kind of slave work necessary to maintain southern gentility, and one of the few anecdotal details in Cain’s extraordinary script carried over intact from Gary Paulsen’s lurid short novel. Paulsen, a prolific author of children’s books, states in a note to his 1993 novel that “except for variations in time and character identification and placement, the events written in this story are true and actually happened.” Though he clearly deserves credit for providing the filmmakers with the kernel of their masterpiece, Paulsen heaps on violence and torture in a way that seems more appropriate to a Mickey Spillane novel than to Cain and Burnett’s nuanced human landscape and intricate plotting. By contrast the filmmakers use just the amount of violence needed for their story — which proves to be more than usual for a Disney picture — and not an ounce more.

https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2022/08/chains-of-ignorance/

I don’t know if you’re familiar with director Charles Burnett, but his most famous movie is Killer of Sheep. Of the movies I’ve seen from him, I think Nightjohn is the most entertaining. I’m sure that alot of people who wouldn’t be interested in Killer of Sheep would enjoy Nightjohn.