The Shining: Book Review

Introduction:

The Shining

by Stephen King

Published in 1977
 
Director Stanley Kubrick's movie the Shining, based on Stephen King's novel, has an IMDB rating of 8.5/10 and features on various lists of top horror movies of all times. 
  
Watch the movie if you haven't, read the book either ways. And yeah, ghosts too forget.
 
Brief:

The story is about a novelist who takes up a job as a winter care taker of an isolated hotel in the mountains. The hotel is quite old and has played host to renowned guests like 4 US presidents, but it is closed for 8 months in the winters. The young novelist decides to become the caretaker and spend the winters snow bound in the big hotel along with his wife and 5 years old son. What he doesn't know is that the hotel has a history, and his son has a special gift, and the combo a deadly one.

  
Review:

The movie isn't your regular slasher movie with ghosts and corpses. I mean, there is a corpse, but Jack Nicholson in his awesome form is scarier than any corpse in the movie. No, it's not blood or rotting corpse that scared me, it was Jack Nicholson, and the whole idea - the idea of spending 8 months snow bound and isolated in a big hotel. Was the hotel haunted? Was Jack Nicholson going mad? Was his son going mad? It could be anything, but the fact remains that this is one of the rare horror stories which have managed to scare the pants off me. I had felt more sick than scared when I had first watched the movie.
 
And while the movie remains one of the best horror movies that I have seen (though it has lost its scare factor after a couple of viewings), I must say that the movie hasn't been able to do full justice to Stephen King's original work. Yes, the novel is longer, scarier and has a much better ending (and I mean better, not happier). Also, the story explains the reasons of all that horror, something which either the movie failed to cover, or maybe I skipped.
 
There had been moments when I couldn't keep the book down, was compelled to keep flipping through the pages, despite getting shit scared (I had to spend one night at my friend's place because I was too scared to sleep alone yet too intrigued to put it down :D)