The Shining - Kubrick vs. King, A Masterpiece of Modern Horror

The basis of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick and The Shining by Stephen King is the novel The Shining by Stephen King. Both movies, however, are fundamentally different. Whereas Kubrick tries to put emphasis on the character development of Jack Torrance combining this with unique camera work, music, and various motifs in order to display the real horror coming from Jack himself, King tries to show what happens to a person in an isolated and haunted hotel, emphasizes, however, little Danny and his shining. Thus, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining can be considered a masterpiece of modern horror. King’s version therefore seems like a mere and ordinary copy. This essay compares the two movies of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King. Both films are directly taken from the novel The Shining written by Stephen King in 1977. Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson took the book as the basis for the screenplay to Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). They basically stripped everything off the book until the bare character Jack Torrance and his transformation were revealed. They then incorporated several motifs, which will be talked about later. Thus, Kubrick was able to create a movie displaying real horror coming from the mind/soul of a human being and not from ghosts or alien-monsters. Stephen King has been known for not liking and harshly criticising Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, since he “said that The Shining includes an exploration of alcohol dependence and relationships with parents and children in one's life.” Therefore, Stephen King produced his own TV mini-series of The Shining in 1997 – an exact book to movie adaptation directed by Mick Garris. To emphasize the dramatic differences between the two novels this essay will compare the camera work, the music, and the characters and in addition will explain the motifs used by Stanley Kubrick. Consequently, it is shown that Stanley Kubrick’s version can be considered as the masterpiece of modern horror, whereas Stephen King’s film version of his novel seems to be no more than a mere and ordinary stereotype.