Every Stephen King Movie Ranked Worst To Best
3. The Shining (1980)
Stephen King infamously panned Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining" because it made Jack Torrance (the demented Jack Nicholson) a bad guy rather than a good one forced into evil.
It's easy to understand King's misgivings about the film, but not the film itself, which finds Kubrick at the height of his methodical filmmaking powers. This a slow-burn about a pitiful man who torments his family, a thriller about madness that also happens to feature ghosts, mind-reading children, and inscrutable mazes.
Open to interpretation, dense with horrors and relentlessly moody - but also strangely amusing at times - The Shining may not be for King, but it's still damn near a masterpiece.