Can someone please explain the ending of the movie "The Shining"?

Answer 1

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

There's two versions of Steven King's novel. In the first, he sold the rights (and creative control) to Stanley Kuprick who made a movie about a guy that cracks up and tries to kill his family. In that version, Wendy and the boy escape and Jack gets lost in the maze and freezes to death.

In the second made-for-TV version, Steven King wrote the screenplay and maintained creative control, and THAT version is about an evil entitiy that inhabits The Overlook Hotel and feeds on the negative energy caused by murders, suicides, etc that occur there. It senses Danny's powers and wants to absorb them on the boy's death. It posses Jack's mind and soul and drives him to kill Danny so it can have his energy. Jack was told by the maintenance man to "dump" the boiler (relieve the pressure) every twelve hours, but Jack is so driven to kill Danny that he forgets the boiler and dies in the explosion! Danny, Wendy, and Dick Halloran (the hotel's summertime chef) escape on a Sno-cat, a kind of snowmobile.

The TV version is much more faithful to the novel, but the original DOES have Jack Nicholson just chewing up the scenery! He's so over the top (as usual) that he's funny! Both versions have their own rewards!

Answer 2

People who die in the Overlook never really leave. Jack isn't anyone reincarnated, he has simply been consumed by the hotel, and made a part of it. Think of the Hotel as a living being. So many bad things happened there over the years (even on the land before the Hotel was built) that the negative energy left over from those acts gave the place a life of its own. That is how the hotel is able to call up all of the ghosts of its past. This is also why the hotel was so desperate to get Danny. Because of his "Shining," he is like a psychic battery (really more like a nuclear power plant). If Danny had died in the hotel (or on its grounds), the living force of the hotel would have grown exponentially. All of this is made much more clear in the book. The Kubrick version is a wonderful movie, but it takes great liberties with the basic story, which at times makes points that are very clear in the book completely ambiguous. The mini-series, while true to King's story, lacks some of the visceral power of Jack Nicholson's performance. I love all three versions of this story, but they really are completely separate works.

Answer 3

I’ve always been a little confused by the ending of The Shining and I’ve watched it over and over on DVD trying to figure it out. Here’s my (probably wrong) take on it…

Wendy and Danny are staying at the hotel as regular guests; but they have some medical problems and thus they think they’ve got a husband/daddy who’s Jack. The rest of the characters and parts (like the janitor slaughtering his two little girls) are all the things that have happen in 1921.

…That’s my take; I really don’t know if I believe what I’m saying but it’s the only thing I could come up with. I love The Shining but I still don’t truly understand the ending of the thing.

Here's the pic for people who've forgotten what it looks like...

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"Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone."
-Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), Sanford & Son

Answer 4

Which one do you mean, the Stanley Kubrick version or the made for tv version?

In the SK version, they were implying that Jack was a reincarnation or a spirit of a previous worker from the Overlook Motel, if you look at the picture, he was in the one from the early 1900's.

Danny had a premonition and could see the evil so in order to save himself and his mother he went into the maze and Jack followed him. Danny was the only one who knew his way out and he back tracked through his foot prints and then covered them so Jack would become lost.

The made for tv version was closer to the book where the motel blew up.

In both movies, the bad spirits were trying to come back to the real world and they needed Jack as an outlet.

Answer 5

I think it is symbolic of the fact that Jack's character is now one with the evil in the hotel - hence him appearing in the picture.

Answer 6

What's to explain, he is back were he belongs among the evil of the house!!

Answer 7

He comes through the bathroom door with a big axe they go out of the window, whats to tell.

Answer 8

read the book it's one of the scariest books ever..it's great

Answer 9

What's to explain?
He died.
The wife and REDRUM kid survived.

Answer 10

credits