The Shining/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: None of the iconic scenes from the film (the ghosts of the girls, the blood in the elevator, "All work and no play...", the "Here's Johnny!" line) are in the book.
    • An interesting case is the hedge maze, which plays a pivotal role in the movie. In the book, it is a topiary garden which comes to life, sort of.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: The movie has this in spades.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The "dog costume" scene in the movie. It actually supposed to be a reference to Overlook's original hotel manager Horace Derwent and his lover Roger, who have quite creepy scenes corcening their relationship in the book. But since Kubrick's version didn't even bother to explain who were the characters, it becomes a completely random moment.
  • Complete Monster: Mr Grady, who killed his wife and his two daughters. Jack Nicholson's version of Jack Torrence in the Kubrick film qualifies as well: by the end of the movie, he's trying to kill his own wife and son without any regrets.
    • The Overlook Hotel, or whatever kind of malevolent force that dwells there. Anyone who dies in the hotel becomes corrupted and evil by its powers, and are condemned there for all eternity.
  • Crazy Awesome: Come on, how can you not love insane Jack Torrence?
  • Cult Classic: Especially when it was first released and was one of the better Stephen King films.
  • Epileptic Trees: many interpretations of the movie.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: One particular Epileptic Tree has become so common as to be all but universally accepted in many academic/intellectual circles. Kubrick himself never officially said anything confirming or disconfirming the interpretation, but many would argue that these people are reading WAY too much into a film intended only to be a chiller whose sole "intellectual" aspect is the way it constantly challenges our view of what's really happening.
  • Growing the Beard: Stephen King felt that the point where he wrote Jack Torrence as a sympathetic antagonist was the point where he got better at writing.
  • Large Ham: Jack's descent into madness arguably runs in direct correlation with the increasing hamminess of Jack Nicholson's acting.
  • Memetic Mutation: HERE'S JOHNNY!
  • Narm: In context, the infamous "dog costume" scene is supposed to be scary. However, since the movie doesn't bother explaining it, it becomes hilarious.
    • The sudden zoom effect - complete with abrupt music change - certainly adds to this. It does bear repeating, however, that the scene only becomes Narmy when removed from the film itself.
    • Wendy's reactions to all the weird stuff going on can be seen as pretty funny.
    • At the end, Jack's moaning is really over-the-top. The shot of him the next morning looking like he needs to poo really bad can induces tittering as well.
    • The scene where the corridor floods with blood... and then a chair floats by.
  • Nightmare Fuel
  • Special Effects Failure: Averted - Kubrick originally wanted to adapt the topiary scene, but realized there'd be no way to make it look convincing onscreen. The garden maze stood in for it.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The movie for many of the book's fans. Outside of them, in both mainstream audiences and horror movie geeks, it's considered one of the best horror films ever.
  • Vindicated by History: Kubrick's version was panned by critics on release to the point where it won Kubrick a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Director. Nowadays it is considered one of the masterworks of horror.
  • Weird Al Effect: More people assume "Here's Johnny!" is from this film, rather than The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
  • The Woobie: Wendy.
    • Not to mention Danny himself.

Back to The Shining