In my small book club of four (including myself) we've decided to read the horror classic: The Shining. The basic plot of the story is about a boy with an overprotective mother and a hot headed drunk for a father. Because of his family issues, it ended up with his father losing his job after violent actions. The dad found a job working at a hotel called the Overlook. The child was born with a sort of paranormal activity; going into premonitions and mind reading. The Overlook was found out to be haunted and had a strange obsession to Danny's (the child) ability, so they put Danny's weakness, his father, on the verge of insanity. I started asking around on others input and I received mixed reviews outside of my group, including quite a lot of positive feedback on the movie. It was the opposite with our club. Everyone, including me, felt like the movie took out many of the important parts in the book, and our favorites as well. They missed out a lot of events completely, changed the hedge animals, and added unnecessary parts in the film. To be honest, the book is, in my opinion, better the movie.
The director missed the most important parts of the book which impacted the story completely. It was unnecessary to change them. For instance, instead of the badge animals, there was a badge maze instead. The animals created tension in the story by showing the slow process of Jack, the father, turning mad. While others weren't looking, the hedges moved, looking as if it would attack. In one part of the book, Hallorann the chef was scratched by the lion, tempting the eat him. The movie could of easily added them in, but the director changed it to a maze. The movie also cut out all the parts of Jack slowly turning mad. He looked mad the moment you saw him (and it didn't help that Jack Nicholson was picked for the role.) The book had a type of writing that divided the people from each other. Each one had a separate way of speaking. It made the book unique. That would be hard to present on film. I could see what went wrong, but the excuses does not hide the fact that, although the movie is a classic, The Shining is best fit as a book.
