The Shining

This movie was an abomination as an adaptation to the book by Stephen King. I respect the shit out of a good Stephen King movie-adaptation, or that is, I would, if there was one that I could actually like remotely, or even at all. The only Stephen King adaptation I've ever loved was The Stand, which is a three part, 90 minutes each, Netflix series so they could get every damn detail correct. That's my favorite book ever and thank jesus it was good or else I would have cried. I know now that when (if) I watch a Stephen King adaptation that I should not expect much past 'meh'.

I really didn't want to see this movie. I have read The Shining and the sequel--yes there is a sequel and it's pretty weird-- Doctor Sleep so you can understand why I wouldn't want to ruin the amazing experience that it a Stephen King novel to a film produced for the masses by the guy who changed the end of A Clockwork Orange because he thought it was a more fitting end to a story he didn't even come up with. And guess what? Same thing here! Kubrick very loosely follows the plot of the book and when it comes to 1. character development 2. rising action and 3. resolution, he fails at eliciting the whole point of the novel. It took me days to build up the proper understanding to truly be awed and horrified at the situation and the characters actions; the fact that all of that is thrown into this two and a half hour mess is painful to my soul.
To begin, the characters in this movie suck. Their development doesn't go far past Jack is crazy, the kid sees dead people and Wendy is obnoxious, which is such a disservice to the complicated emotional backgrounds that Stephen King gave these deep complex characters. Stephen King himself hates the character Wendy in this movie. First of all, she's supposed to be blonde. Now how hard would that have been? Nothing gets me more steamed up than when directors can't get the most essential and basic physical attributes right in a character adaptation from a book. Stephen King's Wendy Torrence was a resilient mother who possessed not one bit of cowardice. Jack and Wendy have a complicated backstory before coming into the hotel; throughout the story and into the buildup of Jack's psychotic break we get the suggestion of insanity though learning about their history together, making that break hold even more weight because the readers knew what kinds of things he was capable of. In the movie we basically get nothing. The movie suggests he out of nowhere gets super crazy and wants to kill them which doesn't make much sense. In the book you understand the motive for everyone's actions.
Who dies and the ending to the movie is all wrong. There are no hedge-cut animals that chase the kid and Jack around. Instead there is a "hedge maze" which is utter bullshit and Mr. Torrence freezes to death in the hedge maze. Now, in the book, there are hedge animals, like lions and shit that are carved out of hedges. They come to life and chase the characters--kind of like the weeping angles in Doctor Who; this version of the hedges is a ton more interesting than a simple hedge maze. I was so disappointing when Jack just freezes to death in the movie because his death in the book is so much more climactic than that. Also, the black guy doesn't die, I repeat--the black guy does not die in the book. I was immensely disappointed with the movie when I saw that Jack just axe's him to death when in book reality, he saves Wendy and the kid from Jack.
Wendy sucks I'll say it now--Wendy just all over sucks. She is nothing like she should be in the book. If she was like she was supposed to be in the book than things would have gone a lot different than they did in the movie. Also, the book centers around the kid, not Jack Torrence, while the movie centers around Jack. The book is made a lot more creepier by the fact that the kid is experiencing all these things that his parents cannot even begin to comprehend, and that he is all alone in these horrific endeavors.

If you couldn't tell by my overall review, I really did not like this movie. The book was so much better and made so much more sense. Realistically, this movie didn't make any sense to me, because the most logical decisions (for the situation) are made in the book and not in the movie. I just thought Jack Nicholson could have done a good job because he is kind of crazy but he wasn't working with the right sequence of events. The chick who played Wendy (Shelley Duvall--yes I know her name) was just a terrible casting choice for this movie. I'm sure her actions and reactions were not her choice in the movie, it was probably just weird direction from Kubrick. I think it's bullshit that the sequence of events did not follow the sequence of events in the book because the book was so much better than the movie. It make me so mad; movies should follow books is my ultimate point.