Michael Bourbon

This film gets rated terribly for terrible reasons. Fans of the Kubrick film continually rank this lower than it deserves simply because it isn't the Kubrick film. It isn't. It doesn't try to be. What it tries to be and (mostly) succeeds at being is a faithful adaptation of the actual book the Kubrick film badly adapted. I like Kubrick's film, but as a Stephen King fan, it's a terrible adaptation of the novel. This miniseries is far, far better of an adaptaion. Stephen Webber's Jack Torrance is sympathetic, loving, and lovable as opposed to the psychotic from the starting line version Jack Nicholson portrayed. As in the book, Jack is a character you grow attached to, and it's tragic what happens to him. Rebecca de Mornay's portrayal of Wendy highlights parts that were present in the book, and absent in the Kubrick film. Like her simultaneous love, and jealousy of Jack and his closeness to Danny. She does a great job of balancing her love for Jack and her difficulties in loving him due to his past drinking problem. The setting at the Stanley Hotel is perfect, since it was the hotel The Overlook was based on. Only one major complaint: Stephen King had an ongoing love for network TV adaptations, which have strong limitations on their content, especially in the 1990s. This would have been better served as a miniseries on a cable network that would have allowed stronger language, and a bit more violence. The way the actors occasionally have to dance around the era's network standards and practices sometimes removes immersion. His earlier adaptation of "IT" suffered from this as well. Despite this, or even because of it, it remains a pretty damn faithful adaptation of the book and a great snapshot of horror in the mid 1990s.