King meets Kubrick

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2012)

Stephen King wrote the Shining intending for the main character, Jack, to be a completely normal man with a wife and son who is hired to be the caretaker for the closed Overlook hotel for the winter. The hotel causes him to slowly lose his marbles. Therein, lies the problem. Jack Nicholson is McMurphy from One flew over the cuckoo's nest the instant he appears on screen. The same wicked smile and look of someone not quite all there in the head. Kubrick chose the wrong actor this time.
Jack hears the legend of the previous guy who watched over the hotel and went postal and killed his entire family. He does not believe it. His wife, Wendy(Shelley Duvall) and son Danny(Danny Lloyd) arrive and a black cook, Dick(Scatman Crothers) is able to communicate with the little boy telepathically. He explains to Danny that he has always had this ability and calls it the shining. He warns the kid to stay out of room 237. Of course, curiosity will cause him to check out room and he sees a dead woman there but keeps it to himself.
The visual highlight is a large and intricate hedge, beautifully landscaped into a maze where Danny and his mother explore.
Meanwhile, Jack suffers from writers block, typing over and over, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy; the author is clearly losing it. King used his own periodical droughts as inspiration for this element.
Danny continues to have visions of doom and frantically writes redrum on a mirror while daddy dearest transforms into Paul Bunyan/Ed Mcmahon, and swings an axe at a door barricading his wife while screaming, "here's Johnny," a typical family dispute.
Danny uses his esp to send an sos to Dick the cook and you will have to watch the movie to find out how it ends.