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Stephen King's The Shining [1997]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Stephen King's The Shining is a new adaptation from the author himself, made for American television, that bears very little resemblance to the 1980 Stanley Kubrick version. Which is not surprising since Kubrick practically threw out most of King's novel and presented his own version of the story. Here King redresses the balance in a mini-series that follows his original almost to the letter, and manages to be effectively creepy despite the budget and censorship limitations of the TV format.

Stephen Weber takes over the role of Jack Torrance, the caretaker who slowly descends into madness in the haunted Overlook Hotel. His performance is as far from Jack Nicholson as you could get, with his insanity building slowly and menacingly rather than being virtually mad from the get-go. Rebecca de Mornay is superb as Wendy Torrance, struggling to hold her fragile family together amid the spooky goings on. Young Courtlan Mead plays Danny, whose unique gifts give the story its title, as one of those infuriating TV brats who overacts left right and centre. Fortunately, there are enough creepy moments and a fair few frights to hold the whole thing together: the woman in the bathtub scene being a stand out shocker. Sure, there is nothing quite like Nicholson's "Here's Johnny!" moment, but this is the story King wanted to tell and it still shines brighter than most of the other recent screen adaptations of his work.

On the DVD: Stephen King's The Shining is a nicely packaged set, with the film spread over two discs complete with a commentary featuring Stephen King himself, instantly making this set a must-have for his fans. There are also several deleted scenes which add some interest to parts of the movie. The transfer is good, considering its TV origins, and the crisp sound captures every spooky moment on this well-thought-out and presented set. --Jonathan Weir


The haunting cruelty has been flushed away
Review date: 2008-11-02 Rating: 8 out of 10

Stephen King never liked Kubrick's adaptation of his eponymous novel. Granted. Then he finally did it himself in the form of a mini series for TV. He had two things to carefully avoid: direct similarities to the film and direct betrayal of his own book since he criticized Kubrick's film as not being faithful to the book. As for the first objective, he tries hard and succeeds on a few elements. Success with the animals carved from bushes in the garden. Success with the hotel that is not the one used by Kubrick, hence smaller and less spectacular. But then the differentiation he is trying hard to introduce makes him change some elements that are directly from the book, hence he drops elements I personally consider essential in the book. The use of the radio: we directly jump to destroying it in a fit of furor. The sabotaging of the snow mobile is reduced to some kind of secondary element. He is not shown has becoming both haunted by the past of the hotel and impotent in his own intellectual work: he drops his playwright's project and delves into discovering the past thanks to old newspapers he finds in the cellar, research and reconstruction, that is intellectual potency. The child does not connect with the killed twins and the man does not connect with the female victim. His going back to the past is reduced to some short sequences and only to two men, altogether. Why has this haunting been reduced? But the famous axe is gotten rid of in favor of a giant crocket hammer that reveals itself particularly sturdy when used as a killing weapon. But the worst is still to come. The end of the hotel is due to the explosion of the boiler. The hotel is not destroyed in the book and Torrance freezes to death in the labyrinth. This explosion is directly caused by Torrance himself in some kind of scuffle with the two ghosts from the past. Torrance hence remains sane at the end and kills himself, the culprit of all this tale, destroys the monstrous hotel, and even worse, a sequence is added ten years later when the boy graduates with honors mind you from his high school in the presence of the black cook who survived what should have been his death and the mother, and, betrayal of betrayals, the ghost of the father expressing his love to the son who receives it with gratitude. This adaptation by Stephen King himself shows an evolution of the author both because of age probably, answering thus to the criticism that he is too cruel with his characters, and to the medium he is using here, television that requires some kind of curbing because of the wide audience it has. But the series, though the rhythm is slower than the film's and that is good, appears to be a pale version of the book and we do not capture the cold of the winter, the isolation of the place and the horror of the derangement of Torrance and also of his wife and his son. We miss particularly the mechanism that brings total annihilation to anyone and anything that stands in the way of the planned vengeance of the past onto the present. There is only one answer to that situation SOS and escape if you can. That's the book. The series does not create that atmosphere and that urgency, not to speak of that fate, connected in the book to some kind of lore about Indians.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines


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Reviews


Disappointed
Review date: 2008-09-15 Rating: 4 out of 10

I was hoping after enjoying the book that the film would be good to,but i found that alot of the contents that was in the book was rushed in the film. I think they could have made it abit longer.

Much more accurate
Review date: 2008-02-26 Rating: 10 out of 10

The Shining is one of my favourite books and to be honest, it deserved a better attempt that Kubrick's version. That's fine for a horror film, but not as a adaptation for one of King's best works.

Who else can adapt a King book like the author himself? This work is a little on the long side but I was pleased to see all the aspects of the book that I enjoyed were there.

On the subject of the most complex character Jack, it was refreshing to see him portrayed as a family man trying to make ends meet for his wife and child without any hint of the monster he would become. I just found that Nicholson's portrayal of such a deep character to be far too simple. King at least gives us far more information on Jack and why the hotel chose him as it's 'host'.

The whole essence of "unmasking", such an important theme in the book, is constantly flowing through this book/adaptation and when read alongside EA Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, we really see what King means by "UNMASK!".

I found the accuracy that King maintained to be striking. It's probably sad that I noticed this, but most of the things described in the book are spot on in this film. Even down to the bathroom in Room 217. King wrote that the floor had hexagonal tiles and King even delivers this in the film. This is probably because the very hotel The Shining is based in was the very hotel used to film (The Stanely Hotel in Colorado). If any set is going to be accurate then what better than the author's inspiration for the story instead of an outdated timber lodge that Kubrick used?

The rest of the cast do okay in their roles. There aren't any major stars in the cast but maybe that's why King chose them. I think Steven Webber does well in his role bearing mind he had the unenviable task of re writing a character who even by that stage Nicholson had made his own. I feel Webber's portrayal of Jack, as has been said, was far more loyal to the book. Nicholson created the image of a man who would explode at any minute. That's fine in other films, but it's not what Jack Torrance is like in the novel and for those who haven't read The Shining, his character really is central to the theme.

Courtland Mead (Danny) is probably a bit too far on the cute, well adjusted kid side of things. He does okay in the role, but for a 6 year old he seems to be remarkably well adjusted to his 'powers' and not as disturbed by them as King states he is in the book. He's also a bit older than King intended. In the book, he's only 5 and can't read.

I also found the reinstatement of the original ending to be refreshing. I also noted the irony of one of Torrance's first lines in the film when Watson reminds him to dump the boiler "Well, it wouldn't be likely to forget a thing like that, would it?". It also again shows that the hotel is the cause Torrance's change and not, as in Kubrick's version, just down to Torrance's psychotic tendencies.

In summary, if you want to see King's own version of the Shining then this is the version for you. However if you've seen Kubrick's version and are just curious, be warned, these films are very different and you may not like King's version in comparison. It's fair to say that I'm one of those people who thing what Kubrick did to The Shining was sacriledge. This version is far superior.

The "real" Shining
Review date: 2007-09-02 Rating: 10 out of 10

being a huge fan of the shining, i loved the stanley kubrick version, however on a long train journey i decided to purchase the novel for the trip. and realised how drastically different the book is from kubrick's version...so my upmost respect for the movie has gone apart from nicholsons performance. however this movie stays true to the book and i loved all 260 minutes of it. not long enought if you ask me. so all in all an amazing movie great casting 5 out of 5. hope this helps

Faithful.
Review date: 2005-08-08 Rating: 6 out of 10

Stephen King's The Shining is drastically different to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. He sticks to the book as much as possible, even at the expense of pacing. It's very very long and there are a lot of scenes that fill out the backstory that was missing from the Kubrick version. King fans should be happy with it. Having read the book, I still find Kubrick's vision infinitely more interesting. This movie is a total adaptation, very faithful and basically a filmed version of the book. It seems to have no life of its own. Stanley Kubrick wasn't very faithful to the book but then he didn't need to be. It's a different medium and some things work better in one than in others, as seen perfectly in King's movie. Some of the more scary moments in the book seem tame and predictable in the film. Kubrick's film was a visual tour de force. It was pure cinema. As such, Kubrick's film might not be as cohesive a story as this, but it will always remain a more exciting, daring and horrifying experience. King's The Shining is not a bad movie by any means, but for me the definitive version already existed, so why bother?

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Rebecca De Mornay
Melvin Van Peebles
Wil Horneff
Steven Weber
Courtland Mead

Creators:
Rebecca De Mornay (Primary Contributor)
Steven Weber (Primary Contributor)
Shelly Johnson (Cinematographer)
Patrick McMahon (Editor)
Elliot Friedgen (Producer)
Laura Gibson (Producer)
Mark Carliner (Producer)
Stephen King (Producer)
Stephen King (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900151153
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2003-02-10
Number of discs: 2
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 273 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1997-04-27
Language: English (Original Language)

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