Although the film retained some basic plot elements from Wyndham's novel, it is not a particularly faithful adaptation: "It strays significantly and unnecessarily from the book and is less well regarded than the BBC's intelligent (if dated) 1981 TV serial". Unlike in the novel, the triffids arrive from a meteor shower, some of the action is moved to Spain and an important character, Josella Playton, is deleted. Most seriously, the screenplay supplies a simplistic solution to the triffid problem: salt water dissolves them and "the world was saved".