https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfpKXa-AhPE The Movie: Stephen King famously disowned Stanley Kubricks 1980 adaptation of his classic horror novel The Shining, which says a lot about how bad an adaptation it actually was, if little else. In actuality, Kubricks movie is a great, dark and ambiguous film, and has rightly been branded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. The two indeed share a few common plot elements, but the style is totally different. Both great, both entirely different. The Ending: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has become a murderous psychopath, hell-bent on murdering his son and wife with an axe. Jack eventually freezes to death in a snowy maze while chasing his son, and the final shot of the film provides one last provocation; it is an image of Jack in the now-infamous Overlook Hotel dated 1921. What does it mean? Who the hell knows? With this ending, Kubrick purposely created a cinematic enigma that he knew viewers would be trying to understand for a very long time. In a beautifully simple way he made it as hard as possible to figure out because the more you look, the more you notice. And the more you notice, well.
Jesse Gumbarge is editor and chief blogger at JarvisCity.com - He loves old-school horror films and starting pointless debates. You can reach out at: JesseGumbarge@JarvisCity.com