Stephen King Month: The Shining (1997)

2.5 Stars - Entertainingly Bad

So Stephen King month boldly continues with his third book, The Shining. You may be wondering why I'm not reviewing the 1980 horror film with Jack Nicholson. Well, I'll get to that one later.

The Shining tells the story of the Torrences: Jack, the Father; Wendy, the Mother and Danny, the seven year old Son. Jack is a recovering alcoholic who has lost his job as a teacher and takes a job as winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a huge building up in the mountains that gets cut off from the world by the snow in the Winter; the family all go together. However the hotel is haunted by a whole bunch of evil spirits, who want to use Danny's psychic abilities, his Shining, to give themselves power and drive Jack insane to do it.

The novel is brilliant, with well crafted characters and a long time spent with them watching Jack's downfall from a caring father and husband to a terrifying monster trying to kill his family. The miniseries is somewhat less brilliant... the dialogue is cheesy, the performances are over the top or annoying and there is very little tension or fear to be found. That said I still find it kind of enjoyable, the location they filmed at is the actual hotel that inspired the story and it has a lot of great areas that are put to the best use they can manage. Stephen Webber chews the scenery to an absurd degree that makes his villainous bit at the end very enjoyable, though not very scary. Most of all I enjoy it because it is actually a very close adaptation of the book, they just sort of failed to make it scary.

Never Overlook The Past

In Short, at four and a half hours, this is probably one to skip unless you're morbidly curious and like a bit of a guilty pleasure...