While Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining into a franchise hasn’t worked out so far, there is no refuting the massive influence that Stanley Kubrick’s iconic Stephen King adaptation has had on horror cinema. Since its release (to a surprisingly chilly critical reception) in 1980, The Shining has become seen as one of the most innovative and original horror movies ever made.
However, not everyone was overawed by Kubrick’s movie and, while critics may have changed their minds about 1980’s The Shining, that doesn’t mean that Stephen King has. King was infamously displeased with 1980’s The Shining, claiming that the adaptation failed to capture the story of his source novel. King was so displeased that he even scripted a more faithful television miniseries version of The Shining years later.
Still angry about how Kubrick had altered his vision over a decade after The Shining’s 1980 release, Stephen King scripted a big-budget television miniseries adaptation of the novel in 1997. While more recent Stephen King movies have often struggled with critics, when the miniseries was released, Stephen King's The Shining was a huge hit. This take on the novel was intended to be the definitive edition of the story and critics raved about Stephen King's The Shining, with TV Guide awarding the show a perfect 10 out of 10 review and the miniseries winning a pair of Primetime Emmy awards. Then something changed and, thanks to a variety of influences like horror’s changing landscape, Kubrick’s growing influence on the genre, and the effects of Stephen King's The Shining aging poorly, the television miniseries came to be seen as a failure.
Why 1997’s The Shining Reviews Changed
When the miniseries was first released, Stephen King's adaptation of The Shining was hailed as a masterpiece. Comparing the show to Stephen King’s scariest stories, Variety praised Stephen King's The Shining for its “depth, complexity," and “creepiness,” while The Hollywood Reporter claimed “The Shining radiates profound power. Entertainment Weekly went as far as saying that ” King and Garris’ Shining improves on Kubrick’s in its emotional depth and quality of performances,” but this high praise faded as the miniseries aged. By 2014, The New York Observer was calling Stephen King's The Shining the worst of the author's many miniseries adaptations.
This change may seem drastic, but the trends in horror at the time make sense of the critical shift. Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining had not yet solidified its status as one of the most influential horror movies of all time when the 1997 miniseries was released and, as The Shining movie and its more ambiguous, symbolic interpretation of the novel became more and more acclaimed, King’s more literal-minded take was seen as comparatively lacking. Kubrick also changed the novel's ending (like many King adaptations) and made Jack Torrance less sympathetic, both choices that made the movie hard to love but ended up having an outsized impact on horror trends for decades afterward. As if this weren't enough, in the two decades after its release, the CGI in Stephen King’s The Shining aged terribly while Kubrick’s more offbeat The Shining only gained acclaim, widening the gap in their critical reception considerably.
