This is probably the most overrated movie of all times. I'm not a huge horror fan and I get scared very easily, but this movie actually made me laugh or sigh in despair about the lengthiness of the scenes and the predictability of the plot. I read the novel when I was a teen and it beat the crap out of me, I still am afraid of bath tubs in hotel rooms (embarrassing but true). The novel is an all time favourite of me and when I read all the great reviews about Kubick's Shining I was really looking forward to see the movie. What a mistake. For all lovers of the book, this is not a book adaptation, Kubick made his own story...unfortunately. Not only does Dick Hallorann get murdered by Jack - the fact he survives in the novel was one of the reasons I loved the book so much, it has after all somewhat of a happy ending -, but even worse, Kubick turned the whole story around and twisted it to an extend where the original plot is hard to recognize. Jack Torrance is very obviously a mad man right from the beginning who very openly hates his wife and kid, so as others have pointed out before, why didn't he leave his family or killed them before. The whole point of the novel, the normal guy and loving father with a hang to alcohol who gradually gets brainwashed by appearances in the hotel, gets totally lost. One might wonder why the movie even needs the whole hotel plot if Torrance is already mad as a hatter from the very beginning. Apart from this, I guess, had I not read the novel I would probably not understand one bit of what was going on with the characters. But unfortunately that's not all. Also the performances of Nicholson and Duvall were so lousy, it really crept me out. I've never seen Jack Nicholson perform so badly, he seemed like a parody of himself and don't get me started on Shelley Duvall. Periodically I thought I watched some amateur actor in a school play. Her adaptation of Wendy Torrance was so annoying I was staggered between the wish of seeing her chopped to pieces and the wish to see her survive and protect her little boy. The character Wendy in the novel is a strong, resourceful person, the Wendy in the movie is a whiny, weak, and extremely stupid person. The fact that she lays down and sleeps while she is trapped with her 'sick' son and a mad man in a hotel with no contact to the outside world is beneath me. The ending is probably the worst part of the entire movie, on the one hand it's ecstasy as the film draws to an end on the other hand it is as far from the original plot as can be which in this case is an extremely bad thing. The only actor that impressed me was Danny Lloyd, apart from the fact that Kubick partly tried to turn him into a parody of Regan MacNeil I think he did a fantastic job for the little six year old boy he was to that time. He seemed like the only natural actor on the scene.
All in all this movie was by far the biggest disappointment I've seen for a long time. Save your time, better read the book.
All in all this movie was by far the biggest disappointment I've seen for a long time. Save your time, better read the book.