The Stephen King's The Shining [2 Discs] (1997)

What the original movie should have been!

I agree with the other reviewer about this film version of the classic horror novel by Stephen King! I was excited to learn of this miniseries just before it aired for the first time on ABC-TV because I had just finished reading, and falling in love, with the terrifying book! Until I read it, the 1980 original with Jack Nicholson had been one of my all-time favorite horror movies. Afterward, I was desperate for a remake because I wanted an adaptation that was what the first movie should have been: A faithful film version that told the story presented in the book, evoking all of the terror of the book. Thanks to a teleplay by the King of Horror himself, the miniseries accomplishes this in spades! Forget Jack Nicholson; Steven Weber is phenomenal as Jack Torrance, and Rebecca DeMornay is just as phenomenal as Wendy. The beautiful, snowbound Overlook Hotel, which is really the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for the legendary novel, also manages to be a spooky, claustrophobic location for the creepy hauntings. With the exception of the truly atrocious CGI hedge animals, the special effects are just as phenomenal as you can find in any other well-made TV movie in the horror, sci-fi, or fantasy genres. If you are a fan of any of the frightful miniseries based on the horror fiction of Stephen King, or you are simply a fan of his scarifying tale of a haunted hotel, see this jolting nightmare and prepare to be entertained and scared senseless!

This second showing of The Shining I think is much truer to the original Steven King novel..True --- it doesn't have crazy Jack Nicholson in it, but it does have things that were left out in the first, such as the hedge animals and a few other things. And it also was given Steven King's control. Get it !