Lindsey Buttel // Blog Writer
Come October, everyone, even the more fearful population, is more prone to watching horror movies and reading horror novels. But with so many to choose from, how do you know that you are actually getting the greatest fright? Both Stephen King, author of the novel, The Shining, and Stanley Kubrick, director of the movie, The Shining, have laid out opportunities for you to sit back and tense up.
When it gets to Halloween night and you want a fun thrill, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation would be the best option to seek out. With little of the back-story that King includes, more of the piece focuses on the cringe-worthy overtaking of The Overlook Hotel. Kubrick’s film is not what we think of when we usually think of a horror film. There are no jump scares and flashes of demons like many of the horror movies today. Most of the fear you get watching this 80s film comes just from Jack Torrance’s (Jack Nicholson) face and the slow, uncomfortable movements of the creatures at the hotel. Nicholson can contort his face – especially his eyebrows – in ways that become more intense and more possessed throughout the entire movie. The scene where Nicholson hugs his five-year-old son, Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd), is one that is so uncomfortable and unnatural that that father-son relationship could be used alone without the other demonic beings in the hotel. And this dynamic of Jack becoming more and more consumed by the hotel starts from the very second he walks in, while in the novel it takes about four hundred pages for the hotel to take its full toll.
In a movie, there is little to let your mind imagine (or hold back) so all of the blood is very present. The ax-murder scene is slightly longer and more thrilling, mostly due to Nicholson’s acting and Kubrick’s direction. More characters are killed and there is a chilling lack of closure in the end.
However, for something a little deeper than a light, Halloween scare, taking the time to read King’s novel would definitely be worth it.
The book has two main layers of horror which Kubrick lacks (primarily for time purposes). King’s novel, split into five different parts, takes a lot of time to set up each of the character’s backstories and different aspects of the hotel. The demons and ghosts are slowly eased in through Danny’s “shining” so the reader has time to process and react to it, even though the descriptions of these characters are specific and gruesome. Most of these creatures, however, do not actually appear until the last two parts of the novel. Additionally, Jack’s undying love for his son is strongly emphasized throughout the novel and murderous tendencies do not come out until the very end. He is still obsessed with the hotel at the beginning but it has not yet consumed him like it does in the movie. The horror that comes in the first sections come from the backstories.
The characters in the hotel and the hotel itself, can be written off as things that are not real when the viewer goes to sleep. But in his novel, King includes very real elements. Rampant alcoholism-turned-aggression in both Jack and his father run through his mind the whole novel and only grows stronger when the hotel induces flashbacks. The feeling of being unloved by your family and never being able to be a good enough mother plagues Wendy Torrance to the point that she provokes an already slightly murderous Jack when she just wants Danny to love her equally. Danny is also a way more developed character as half of the book is written in his point of view. He spends most of the book in fear of his gift, both from the precognitions he sees and in fear that, no matter what, no one will believe him. Danny is in a dilemma most of the novel knowing that his family will be harmed by the hotel while also knowing that he has no way of saving his loved ones. These fears are all very real and can be very close to home depending on the reader. These horrors do exist and will not go away when the television is turned off or when the book is closed. Though Kubrick’s movie is complex, it does not have these dual layers of horror that create a more terrifying story—both real and imagined.
Getting a group together to watch The Shining will fulfill your light horror thirst on Halloween, but reading King’s novel is a deeper, more complex horror that doesn’t necessary involve the demons we want to see on Halloween.