But when you try to do a sequel to a film as iconic as “The Shining,” the result tends to come out like “The Two Jakes” or “The Godfather Part III” or “Psycho II”: a pale, forgettable, entirely superfluous imitation of the original. Nearly every aspect of Kubrick’s visualization of the Overlook Hotel and its live-in demons - the corridors with their ’70s-suburban-acid-trip orange-and-brown hexagon carpeting, the Diane Arbus twins in their teal party dresses, the Hawaiian Punch blood splashing out of the Navajo Deco elevators, the lobby with its adobe walls and high-ceilinged wagon-wheel chandeliers, the somnambulant British caretaker talking in the bathroom in hypnotic dream time, the rotting-old-lady specter emerging from behind the shower curtain of Room 237 - is as iconic as anything that exists in contemporary screen horror.Įven a good serious film, like “Before Sunrise” or “The Hustler,” can beg for a sequel. And in the 40 years since Stanley Kubrick’s spooky cerebral film version of “The Shining” came out, the movie has come to define the look and mystique of this story in our culture.
Stephen King’s original novel, which was published in 1977, remains one of his greatest (it’s not a tale that needs to be messed with). On the face of it, making a sequel to “ The Shining” does not sound like a promising idea.
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