CHRIS ZIEGLER at O.C. Weekly writes about The Shining:
."As a novelist, Stephen King—on whose book the film was based—never quite drops into the sort of unprocessable insanity Kubrick deploys here in snapshot moments: the blood flood from the elevator; the evil twins with their evil eyes; the friendly bear-suit buddies. It’s what writer and world-famous chronicler-of-the-forbidden Charles Fort called “high strangeness”—the horror not of the unknown but of the unknowable—and its part of why history and initial critic King both have come to accept the film as a classic." (October 15, 2009 http://www.ocweekly.com/2009-10-15/calendar/the-shining)
.Right! "Short unprocessable insanity". . . I guess that's one way to see it. One of the nice things about King's brand of horror is that it's not just "insanity." It is a carefully built story. Truly creepy. Interwoven with plot and rich character. Where as Kubrick seems at times to have just strewn scenes together.
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Now, the posted image above is pretty freaky. But the fact that the film is unnerving doesn't make it in anyway superior to King's work.
.And I liked Kubrick's version! But, as King rightly said. . . it's not his story! King's novel is, frankly, better.
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