The Shining: Book Vs. Film

SPOILERS, OF COURSE

     Over the years, and especially in the past several, Horror movies have had a resurgence in quality and atmosphere. Movies like The Witch, Black Swan, and most recently Hereditary have succeeded in creating and developing an atmosphere which is vital to the affect the movie can have on the viewer. In my opinion: these movies, though all great, owe a great deal to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece The Shining. The Shining is the first "modern" Horror movie I can immediately think of in which the atmosphere is just as much of a character as any other member of the cast. It still stands as my favourite Horror movie, and one of my favourite movies.

     On the other side of the coin, we have to give credit where credit is undoubtedly due. Though I am very new to the work of Stephen King (I have only just recently read my first King book with Salem's Lot, and am quite literally hot off the heels of The Shining which I finished the day I decided to start writing this post) I have always known in passing that he deserves the respect he is given in the literary world. He will always be typecast and known as a Horror writer, but his skill is undeniable.

     For example, Salem's Lot gives you a very private look inside the heads of every one of the titular town's residents in a very impressive short chapter, and The Shining very convincingly gives us point-of-view chapters from inside the mind of a telepathic, or "shining" 6 year old boy, who is older than his years through the things he can see and hear every day, such as private thoughts of adults and his own parents, though he is still young and imaginative enough to need a night light to get to sleep. King deserves the praise he gets for masterly creating scenarios that could not exist in the real, far too logical world, and make them to be so real and relatable. Stephen King also famously considers Kubrick's The Shining to be his least favourite adaptation of one of his works. He claims that Kubrick didn't "get" the book. Obviously the writer holds stake when it comes to critiquing adaptations of his/her own work, and I can see why King didn't like it so much but I do believe the film is much better than King gives it credit for.

*For the sake of organization and readability, I will be breaking this post into two sections: Book and Film. This is so I can talk about each medium's offering in detail, and not just muddle my words with back and forth comparisons. I will however point out differences where they affect the quality of each medium.

Stephen King's The Shining:

     King's Shining is a tragedy, at least that's how I see it by the ending. It ends on a very bittersweet note, and though a satisfying climax still leaves you emotional for Wendy Torrance and her Shining son Danny. They have just gone through an unbelievable, psychologically mind-bending hell.  "All hotels have ghosts" Jack Torrance thinks to himself again and again, and the book's increasingly schizophrenic bracket notes tell us this as well, along with (!REDRUM!), and (This inhuman place makes human monsters). Jack is a former alcoholic and at one point had a hellish temper, Wendy Torrance is ever afraid that he will lash out at Danny again, just as he broke Danny's arm in a fit of blind fury some years earlier. While you could interpret the movie's depiction of Jack's psychological break midway through as a simple case of Cabin Fever, it becomes clear in the book that these ghosts the hotel houses are in no way hallucinations.

     What is real, and what is not? The book asks us this question from the moment Danny's psychic ability manifests itself in the Torrance family's isolated winter lodging, The Overlook hotel. Dick Hallorann, The Overlook's kind chef detects Danny's Shining ability instantly on the family's tour of the building before they're left alone to look after it in the desolate Colorado Rockies winter. He warns Danny of several "Bad Things" to look out for: Room 217, and the topiary(hedge) animals. Though we know Danny's psychic gift is real at this early point in the story, we still are aware that he's still just an imaginative, naive young boy. Will his parents believe if anything bad happens to him while invisible forces seek to terrorize him? Yes, and this is why the book is great. It does not rely on the tired horror trope of "if people don't see the evil, they don't believe it" The evil, whether it is The Overlook itself or the spirits inhabiting it, reveals itself to Danny and becomes very apparent as a character in the book. Jack is dogged by living hedge animals, the elevator comes to life and materializes old party supplies, and Danny is nearly strangled to death in Room 217 by a rotting, drowned former resident.

     The most haunted character in the book is Jack Torrance, the hotel's conscious evil spirit wants Danny's shining and it knows Jack is the weakest link, though dry for years he is constantly yearning for a drink, and the living presence of the hotel deteriorates his spirit, mind, and body in tandem. The hotel causes him through dreams, visions, and hallucinations to destroy his family's only ways of contact with the outside world: The voice of his dead, drunkard father tells him through the 2-way radio to "KILL THE PUP AND YOUR DISHRAG WIFE" which causes him to smash it to pieces, he simply gets the vital compelling urge to dispose of the only snowmobile battery in the hotel in a snowdrift. All of this leads to the final straw: the hotel and it's collected ghosts gather in a macabre ballroom party, with an open bar. The thing is, there was no alcohol in the hotel at Jack and Wendy's advanced request at the beginning of their stay. The hotel itself manifests liquor in Jack's weakest state for him to get drunk on, and then possessed by presumably The Overlook itself, Jack goes on his rampage. Maiming both Dick Hallorann, who came again to The Overlook at the drop of a hat when Danny "shouted" in his mind in pure terror "OHGODDICKPLEASECOMEHESCOMING", and his wife Wendy, almost killing her. Jack ends up dead inside the charred remains of The Overlook, which exploded due to Jack's hacking the boiler to pieces with an axe. Danny, Wendy, and Dick all escape.

     Though Jack caused dread and terror for his wife and young son, they both know it was the hotel which killed him and aimed to kill them and they spend the epilogue grieving for Jack, for a very somber and bittersweet end. The book is far more complete and clear cut in terms of structure than the movie is, for better or worse. King is correct in saying that the 1980 film is a rather poor adaptation of his novel, but it is entirely enthralling and enigmatic, a very praiseworthy staple of much of Kubrick's work.

 Stanley Kubrick's The Shining:

     The opening credit sequence of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is probably the most uncomfortable sequence in the film. Jack Torrance, on his way to The Overlook for the first time to interview for the job of caretaker, drives through the beautiful Colorado rockies though we see through the camerawork that we are to be given the impression that he is being followed through the air by some intelligent force, it doesn't help that the scene is accompanied by the most haunting film score I've ever heard, it remains in my mind the most memorable opening to a film. Kubrick's film shines in the aspect that it leaves us feeling more like Jack Torrance in the book, going mad and confused. The movie is a claustrophobic psychological trudge through the Torrance family's mental torment.

     In a way, I can see why King dislikes the movies the way that he does. The book makes its extra effort to inform the reader that this is NOT in the Torrance family's heads, though the evil force in the hotel preys on their minds and mental states, Kubrick's film removes all blatant hints that the haunting might be real. The living hedge animals are gone, we only see things through Jack and Danny's viewpoints, and the only hint that the film's events might be supernatural are Dick Hallorann's interventions and Jack's encounter with the "Bathtub Lady" Danny's playground encounter with a malevolent spirit and the "Dogman" are either removed or reduced to unexplained short cuts in the movie. The infamous hedge maze was added to the film, and I think is one of the more important changes from the source material.

     Through changing the source material in the way that Kubrick did, he allowed us to be a part of the Torrance family's torment. The final minutes of the movie, involving Jack's crazed pursuit of Danny through the hotel and the hedge maze in a blizzard are some of the most harrowing final minutes in a film. We are also deprived of the mostly bittersweet ending the book gave us in it's epilogue, and instead slapped in the face with one of the most potent jumpscares in horror as the final shot of the film.

     I believe that both Kubrick and King know their own medium better than the other, if a conversation was had between the two before the movie was made I believe some of the differences could have been ironed out, I am glad it is as it is though. Through the disagreements and diverging routes through the core story, we are left with two unique and striking products. King's superb supernatural thriller, and Kubrick's lauded psychological horror movie.