Correcting the problem: genre trouble and manipulation in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick’s film, 1980; Mick Garris’s miniseries, 1997)

Stephen King’s 1977 horror bestseller The Shining has been notoriously adapted on screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1980. Seventeen years later, greatly dissatisfied with Kubrick’s version, King was to write a teleplay adapted for TV by Mick Garris, aptly called Stephen King’s The Shining (1997), to “correct” the first iconic adaptation. Materializing on screen the notion of “corrections” is also at the heart of both the film and its long-form retelling as the potent horror and madness the hotel exudes contaminate its guests and employees. As normalcy and regular family life are slowly being fully distorted and redefined, the inscription of “trouble” and abnormality diverges widely in the two versions. Alternating between a harrowing story of alcohol addiction and destructive madness, and a tale of the supernatural and resident evil, the filmic narrative changes forms and genres in a sometimes problematic way.