The Shining

“Here’s Johnny!”Kubrick’s The Shining isn’t the best when it comes to it being an adaptation. Stephen King seems to generally like the adaptations of his work, but The Shining is the exception and I can kind of see why. The movie has the general story of the novel, but it plays around with a lot of the plot, characters and how the story is handled. It’s much less a ghost story and much more psychological. There’s also a lot of other aspects that are different, but I won’t go into all that. In that sense, I’m looking at this movie as its own thing, not as an adaptation. If you wanted a more accurate on screen representation, there’s a mini series out there (and from what I heard it’s not that good).  Now there are two different cuts of the movie, I saw the longer version and I can’t remember if I watched the shorter version when I saw this four years ago. The plot is rather straight forward, and while it does feature aspects like psychic abilities with The Shining (which Danny has), for the most part the movie is a psychological thriller. It slowly builds up the tension and uneasiness, amps it up in the second half, and in the 3rd act turns into a pure nightmare. It really builds on top of each other as the 3 main characters start going insane over time, particularly Jack. So much of this film is left up to the viewers’ interpretations, especially with the ending. So each person will probably get something different out of it from each other. The Shining is a horror classic for a reason and honestly talking about it was a little hard, considering how redundant it felt given that it’s been talked to death for decades, there’s nothing I could’ve said that hasn’t been said already. The acting from its cast is great, and Stanley Kubrick’s direction is nothing less than masterful. If you haven’t seen The Shining, you need to get around to it soon because it’s really something significant. Even if you aren’t into horror, if you’re into film as an art form, The Shining is pretty much essential viewing. Can’t wait to watch it in IMAX when it comes to theaters.