I just have a lot of personal issues with it from the casting to how completely different it is from the book. It should have a 'based LOOSELY on the novel The Shining' tag on it.
What is your favorite Stephen King film?
- Thread starter deadeyededric
- Start date
I’ve read the book a handful of times and seen the movie a hundred times (maybe not that many, but a lot). They really aren’t all that different, IMO. Are they same? No, but not drastically different.
- Jack is a recovering alcoholic teacher/writer with an abusive past
- Wendy is a victim of domestic abuse with Stockholm syndrome
- Danny has a strange gift that nobody really understands
- Halloran has the same gift as Danny, and they are able to communicate with each other; he also knows the hotel is more than people realize and is scared for the family
- Jack takes a winter caregiver position as a means to get away and focus on his writing
- Really weird **** happens, and gradually becomes weirder the longer they stay at the hotel
- Jack turns on his family
The book ties Jack’s relationship to the hotel itself a little more. The book also dives deeper into the emotional and physical abuse a bit more. Wendy is a bit of a stronger character in the book, but still can’t “leave”. A book has the luxury of establishing these things better than a shorter length movie would be able to. A book can work out inner monologue, while a movie has to show the audience.
While I like the book, I actually think it’s a bit hokier than the movie. The hotel itself is more than just haunted in the book. It’s an entity in and of itself.
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Probably.
Still, Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance gives one of the most brilliant performances in the history of film.
Roughly this order:
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
Stand By Me
Misery
Carrie
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
Stand By Me
Misery
Carrie
Holy cow I couldn't disagree with you more on how vastly different they are. I've read the book a few times and seen the movie plenty. I even try to watch it again because so many think it's so great and terrifying and i can't. It is just laughably awful.
The novel is a slow-burn tragedy about alcoholism and the erosion of a family. It’s scary because it’s personal. The movie trades that deep psychological dread for cold, calculated visual tricks and is a slow burn of dread. If you don't find creepy twins or jumpy editing scary, there really isn't much left to hold onto. The movie feels like an abstract art project, whereas the book is a gut-wrenching story about a man failing to break a cycle of abuse.
The casting is just horrific. In the novel, Jack starts out a "normal," mild-mannered man whose descent into madness is shocking. Because Nicholson is famous for playing intense, slightly unhinged characters, he looked angry and crazy from the very first scene, leaving no room for a character arc. In the novel, Jack has moments of genuine love and resistance, and he ultimately experiences a moment of redemption at the end where he tries to save Danny. In the film, he is portrayed as a much more predatory, villainous figure from early on. And don't get me started on Shelly Duvall and Danny Lloyd.
But the biggest laugh WTF is the change in Hallorann. In the novel, Hallorann is a true hero where he receives Danny’s psychic "shine," drops everything to travel across the country, survives the hotel's traps, and successfully rescues both Wendy and Danny. In the movie, Hallorann’s heroic journey is treated like a joke. He arrives at the hotel only to be immediately killed by Jack with an axe.
The book is an allegory for the struggles of alcoholism and family violence. The movie is a cold, abstract and technical exercise in style that focuses more on visual symmetry and psychological detachment than the domestic tragedy King intended.
This is good. I appreciate your thoughts here. I enjoy both, but prefer the movie. The cosmology of the book feels like a crutch to me. Jack is a flawed character in both, but the book is about some cosmological entity using him, as opposed to severe psychological issues, issues present in both adaptations, manifesting under extreme circumstances.
THANK YOU! Everybody just falls over themselves to praise Kubrik's The Shining, and it's just possibly the most ridiculous crap I've ever seen. Literally never scary, and Jack is clearly crazy from the start.
This is probably all true, but I have never read The Shining and never will, because I don’t like King as an author. So I have no emotional ties to the story.
Everyone is allowed to feel their own way about movies...but The Shining is definitely the biggest movie I disagree with the masses on. I honestly think it's one of the worst movies ever made.
Which makes total sense. If you've never read the book you have no history of anything it should or shouldn't be. Yet even then, the movie is just a boring yawnfest and I would still hate it even if I never read the book.
demoncore1031
Well-Known Member
Agreed. I thought the remake was actually better than the original, which feels weird to say because I typically don't care for remakes.
Oh, god, someone who agrees with me. I watched it once and it was such a slog given the acting. Just horrible.
I'm so with you. It's always near the top of all-time horror lists, and I just always wonder if I'm being trolled.
