How Long Is “The Shining”?

In legendary director Stanley Kubrick's chilling adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel, Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance, a struggling writer who accepts a job as caretaker of The Overlook Hotel, a luxurious but remote resort closed for the winter, where Jack, his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd) will be the only residents for several snowy months. Jack hopes that the solitude will give him a chance to focus on his writing; problems with alcohol have made him abusive and cost him more than one job. While giving the Torrances a tour of the Overlook, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) senses that Danny shares his gift of "shining," the ability to read thoughts and see the spirits of the dead. And there are malevolent spirits aplenty at the Overlook; soon Jack is seeing them as well, and he falls from his shaky stability into full-blown murderous madness, with Danny's powers offering the family's only hope of survival. Nicholson's over-the-top performance is never less than compelling, and it's amusingly appropriate that Jack, bitterly sarcastic while sane, would turn into a gleefully wisecracking murderer while mad. And Kubrick offers ample evidence of his genius as a visual stylist; once seen, such images as Danny's winding through the Overlook on his tricycle, a river of blood pouring forth from an elevator, and the beautiful but dangerous woman in room 237 cannot be forgotten. The Shining was remade as a 1997 TV mini-series, scripted by Stephen King, who objected to Kubrick's version; more faithful to the book, it didn't achieve this film's unnerving power.