Metamorphosis, the 2012 film version of The Metamorphosis, is in many ways faithful to the plot of the novella. In both, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up transformed into a giant insect who must be tended to by his family.

The main difference is that the movie version heightens and exaggerates the weak and evil qualities of the family. Kakfa's far more subtle exploration of dependency emphasizes the banality of evil. The novella's family is passive and gradual in its growing rejection and neglect of Gregor as he turns from wage earner helping his parents pay off their debts to a creature who costs the family money while producing nothing in return.

In the movie, unlike the novella, where all the family members work hard, the father is depicted as lazy and resentful of no longer having Gregor to leech off of. Also unlike in the novella, the father actively attacks Gregor with the intent to kill him, stopped only by the intervention of the mother. Gregor's mother is depicted as sickly, suffering from asthma, another difference from the novella, and his sister is exaggerated into overly controlling. The charwoman, who in the novella is somewhat sympathetic to the neglected Gregor, more so at the end than his family, is depicted as coarse and hardhearted in the film.

The film thus shifts away from being an indictment of capitalism, in which a person's wage-earning capacity is the key to being loved, to an indictment of the flaws and pathologies of a particular family.