There’s a comforting familiarity to checking into a hotel — the reliably unchanging layouts, the fluffy pillows, the convenience of room service. At the same time, settling into strange new quarters can unsettle the more imaginative of us. How many people have slept in this bed before? Could any of the mirrors be two-way? Have you checked every little crevice for hidden cameras?
Two Stephen King adaptations tapped into the more disconcerting aspects of a prolonged hotel stay. Jack Torrance took over as winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel in The Shining, only to spiral into madness in a chilly retelling of King’s novel that’s cemented itself as a horror classic. With an auteur like Stanley Kubrick at the helm, unspooling unease from the Overlook’s labyrinthine layout and sordid spectres, and a cultural afterlife of viewers inventing conspiracies out of its ambiguity, it’s easy to see why King’s other haunted hotel adaptation has been overshadowed.
