The Shining: where to start reading
Adapts The Shining by Stephen King. Say how far you watched, and pick the book up exactly there.
at The Shining.
Kubrick's film keeps the setting and premise but reworks the story into a colder, more ambiguous psychological horror, downplaying the novel's themes and changing its ending. Stephen King publicly disliked the adaptation and produced his own more faithful 1997 miniseries. The novel is well worth reading as its own story; its sequel, Doctor Sleep, follows it.
The movie draws on this book. Read the full story:
The Shining
What the movies changed here
- ChangedThe book's living topiary hedge animals become the film's now-iconic hedge maze, cut mainly for budget and effects limits.
- ChangedWendy is a passive, panicked figure on screen; in the book she is far cooler and stands up to Jack.
- ChangedThe film keeps Jack's descent ambiguous (a bored alcoholic); the book states plainly that the ghosts drive him mad.
- ChangedDick Hallorann's role and fate are reworked from the novel's version.
Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adapts Stephen King's 1977 novel but departs from it substantially; King disliked it and later backed his own more faithful 1997 miniseries.
Rate it from where you are. No account, and nothing here says a word about what happens next.
