Halloween 2K26 - The Shining Mini-Series

When people talk about The Shining, they are almost always talking about Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. It's a beautiful movie filled with memorable performances, eerie music, incredible cinematography, and some of the most iconic images in horror history. I like The Shining. I've watched it several times over the years and completely understand why its reputation has only grown.

But when I think about The Shining, that's not the version that immediately comes to mind.

My Shining is the 1997 television miniseries directed by Mick Garris and starring Steven Weber as Jack Torrance.

Part of that preference is no doubt influenced by nostalgia, but I'm comfortable in admitting that. The Kubrick film came out several years before I was born, and by the time I finally watched it as a teenager, it was already part of horror history. I enjoyed it and appreciated what it was doing, but I was arriving late to the party. Whatever excitement had surrounded its original release was long gone.

The 1997 miniseries was different. That was my Shining.

Sometime in early 1997, I started noticing articles in the newspaper about a new adaptation of The Shining. This wasn't just going to be another remake. Everything I read emphasized that this was going to be Stephen King's version of the story, one that would more closely follow his novel. Even stranger, at least to thirteen-year-old me, was the casting of Steven Weber. The funny guy from Wings was going to play Jack Torrance?

Then the television commercials started airing, and suddenly this thing felt enormous. For a thirteen-year-old horror fan, it was exactly the sort of event that could completely take over your imagination for a few weeks. There was no streaming service where I could watch it whenever I wanted. There wasn't going to be a button waiting for me after school. If I wanted to see The Shining, I needed to be sitting in front of the television when ABC aired it.

My local newspaper even put The Shining on the cover of its big pull-out weekly television guide. I tore the cover off and tacked it onto my bedroom wall.

When the night of the premiere finally arrived, I was ready. The lights were off, a blank VHS tape was sitting in the VCR, and I settled in hoping that all of the buildup had been worth it.

For me, it absolutely was. I loved it.

I sat there in my room completely absorbed by it, and because the story unfolded across three nights, the experience lasted for days. You'd watch an installment, spend the next day thinking about what had happened, and then return to the Overlook the following evening. There was something wonderful about that rhythm. Instead of devouring an entire series in one sitting, you had time to live with the story between episodes.

And I wasn't alone in watching it. The miniseries drew a huge television audience, and at the time it felt like everybody was paying attention. That's something I miss about television from that era.

Stephen King miniseries in the 1990s felt like genuine events. It, The Stand, The Langoliers, and eventually The Shining would arrive with weeks of advertising and promotion. Then millions of people would all sit down at approximately the same time and watch the same creepy thing.

Streaming has obviously made television more convenient, but it has also made experiences like that increasingly rare. There was something fun about knowing that while you were sitting in your dark bedroom watching the Overlook Hotel come to life, millions of other people were seeing the exact same scenes at the exact same moment. And then the next morning, people could actually talk about it.

As much as I enjoyed the horror elements, what really stuck with me was Steven Weber's performance. At the time, I primarily knew Weber as Brian Hackett from Wings, so seeing him play Jack Torrance was almost disorienting. He wasn't simply doing a slightly darker variation of his sitcom character. He disappeared into this angry, frightened, deeply damaged man whose life was slowly collapsing around him.

That's also where I think the miniseries and Kubrick's film differ the most.

Jack Nicholson is fantastic in Kubrick's The Shining, but there is something dangerous about his Jack Torrance almost immediately. Even before the Overlook really begins working on him, Nicholson gives Jack an edge that makes you wonder how stable he ever was in the first place. Weber's Jack feels more tragic to me.

He's a man carrying enormous baggage into the hotel. He's struggling with alcoholism, anger, guilt, and the knowledge that he has already hurt the people he loves. He wants to repair his life. He wants to be a better husband and father. He wants this job at the Overlook to provide the quiet and stability he needs to finally put everything back together. Then the hotel discovers all of those weaknesses and begins pulling him apart.

That makes the story more heartbreaking because you can see the man Jack might have been. You can also understand why Wendy and Danny love him despite everything that has happened. The horror isn't simply that Jack Torrance becomes dangerous. It's that the Overlook takes a damaged man who still has some hope of redemption and exploits every crack it can find.

Rebecca De Mornay's Wendy also feels very different from Shelley Duvall's interpretation of the character. This Wendy is stronger and more openly confrontational, which changes the family dynamic considerably. Courtland Mead's Danny plays a much larger role as well, and because the miniseries has more time to work with, his relationship with Tony and his psychic abilities receive much more attention.

The additional runtime is the miniseries' greatest advantage.

Kubrick's film is a little under two and a half hours. The miniseries has several hours to spend with these characters and with the Overlook itself. That allows it to incorporate far more material from King's novel and gives Jack's deterioration room to unfold gradually.

The miniseries is very much a product of 1997 network television, and occasionally that works against it. Some of the visual effects have aged poorly, especially the computer-generated imagery. There are moments when something intended to be terrifying now looks like it escaped from a Windows 95 screensaver.

But sometimes its the cheesy effects that are part of the charm of older horror movies.

Thankfully, most of the production still looks remarkably good. The practical effects, makeup, sets, and location photography do a great job, and the atmosphere remains effective.

One of the smartest decisions was filming at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the hotel that originally helped inspire Stephen King to write The Shining. That gives the miniseries an interesting connection to the novel that the Kubrick film doesn't have. The Stanley doesn't look anything like Kubrick's imposing Overlook, but there's something wonderfully old-fashioned and slightly haunted about it.

The miniseries also existed because King famously wasn't happy with Kubrick's adaptation.

King wrote the teleplay himself, giving him an opportunity to put many of the elements from his novel back onto the screen. His version focuses more heavily on alcoholism, domestic abuse, redemption, and the supernatural history of the hotel. Jack Torrance isn't merely the monster of the story. He's also one of its victims.

The production ended up being successful enough to receive considerable awards attention as well, including multiple Emmy nominations and wins for makeup and sound editing. At the time, it wasn't viewed as some embarrassing television remake of a classic film. It was treated as a major network production. Yet its reputation has taken an interesting path in the years since.

Kubrick's The Shining has become nearly untouchable. It's discussed in film schools, endlessly analyzed on YouTube, referenced in television and movies, and regularly included on lists of the greatest horror films ever made.

Meanwhile, the 1997 Shining has slowly faded from public consciousness.

Around ten years ago, I finally sat down and watched the entire miniseries again. I figured I'd enjoy revisiting it while also recognizing that thirteen-year-old me had probably been a little generous, so I was surprised by how well it held up.

There are some dated effects and moments where the network-TV budget become obvious, but the performances still work. The story still works. Most importantly, Steven Weber's Jack Torrance still works.

And after watching it again, I realized something controversial. I still prefer it to Kubrick's film.

That doesn't mean I think it's a better piece of filmmaking. On a purely cinematic level, Kubrick's The Shining is operating in another universe. The cinematography, production design, performances, editing, and music are extraordinary. But movies aren't spreadsheets. Our favorites aren't always determined by which production scores the highest number of objective points. Sometimes it's about when you saw something or who you were when you saw it.

I was thirteen years old. I was a horror-obsessed kid with a television guide tacked to his bedroom wall and a blank VHS tape waiting in the VCR. For three nights in 1997, I got to check into the Overlook Hotel along with millions of other people. And that's The Shining I remember.

I'd especially recommend it to anyone who has only seen Kubrick's movie and never read King's novel. Don't approach it expecting another Kubrick film, because that's precisely what it isn't trying to be. It's slower, more sentimental, occasionally cheesier, and much more interested in Jack Torrance as a human being.

Oddly enough, I also think knowing King's version of the story makes Doctor Sleep more effective. Mike Flanagan had the almost impossible task of making a sequel that acknowledged both King's novels and Kubrick's film, two versions of The Shining that famously disagree with one another. Understanding what King originally intended for Jack and the Overlook gives Doctor Sleep an emotional layer that isn't quite as obvious if Kubrick's movie is your only reference point.

History has been incredibly kind to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, but it hasn't been nearly as kind to Mick Garris' version. Which is a shame, because I think had Kubrick not made The Shining, we'd all be celebrating Mick Garris' version all these years later.