The Shining may be Stephen King's least favorite adaptation of his work, but it's my favorite – and features Shelley Duvall giving one of the best horror performances ever

45 years after it first hit theaters in 1980, The Shining is back on the big screen – and it's showing in IMAX for the first time, in what's bound to be one of the most intense cinema experiences you'll have this year.

The Shining follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer who gets a job as an off-season caretaker at the remote Overlook Hotel. He moves there for the winter with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd), but his mental state quickly begins to unravel between the hotel's walls with violent, terrifying consequences. The film has become a cornerstone of pop culture, referenced by everything from The Simpsons to Breaking Bad, but it's had a mixed reception over the years.

Stanley Kubrick's movie is based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, but the author wasn't a fan of the adaptation. Kubrick and co-writer Diane Johnson's screenplay makes some changes to King's book, including Jack and Wendy's characterizations and the shift away from Danny's point of view. King has spoken out against the movie multiple times; in a 2013 interview, he said that Kubrick's Wendy is "one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film. She's basically just there to scream and be stupid." Duvall was also nominated for Worst Actress at the first-ever Razzies in 1981.

Fear factor

Of course, the movie has been thoroughly reappraised in the four-and-a-half decades since its initial release (although not by King, it should be noted), but there's one element of the movie that's still often unfairly maligned or misrepresented: Shelley Duvall's performance as Wendy Torrance. This is, in part, due to wilful misreadings of her acting and also down to internet mythology with misogynistic undertones that undermine her agency as an actor.

Because, contrary to King's opinion, I would argue that Wendy is there to do a lot more than "scream and be stupid" and, in fact, is the glue that holds the whole movie together. Jack Torrance is a frightening figure, but he wouldn't be half as scary without Wendy's role as the vehicle for that fear. If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, it may not make a sound, but if Jack is rampaging through the Overlook with an ax and there's no one hiding in a bathroom, it's not nearly as spine-chilling. Horror, like most genres, needs its key players to work, and The Shining is no exception. There's no hunter without the hunted.

Duvall's performance was the result of a gruelling 56-week shoot that pushed her to her physical and emotional limits. The infamous staircase sequence, in which Wendy fends Jack off with a baseball bat, reportedly took 127 takes to film (although this has been disputed), for example, and it once held a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. That's a lot of stairs to climb.

"[Kubrick] doesn’t print anything until at least the 35th take," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. "35 takes, running and crying and carrying a little boy, it gets hard. And full performance from the first rehearsal. That’s difficult." She's often painted as a victim of Kubrick, but, in her lifetime, the actor only ever spoke highly of the director and their relationship, even though he put her through her paces on set. Never mind Kubrick's behavior – victimizing Duvall and disregarding her own narrative is pretty misogynistic in and of itself, in my book.

Scream queen

Speaking of which, let's go back to the "scream[ing] and be[ing] stupid." Wendy does scream a lot over the course of the movie, sure. But what else is a person meant to do when their husband is matter-of-factly telling them that he's going to bash their brains in? What else should a person do when they're trapped in a bathroom while their husband is cutting down the door with an ax?

Duvall's performance perfectly captures the nightmarish feeling of paralyzing fear. When she's trapped in that bathroom, unable to fit through the window, while Danny waits for her outside, you can feel her panic radiating off her in waves. It's as if the four walls around the viewer are closing in, too. Duvall's version of Wendy isn't as calm and collected as King's, no, but she exhibits a raw, realistic type of fear – if not one we've ever realized ourselves, then one we've certainly felt at one point or another in our lives. It's the feeling of sleep paralysis, of knowing you're having a bad dream but not being able to wake up, of sweating and freezing simultaneously under your bed sheets. I can't think of a better example of that intense, visceral terror being represented on screen.

So, what says "happy holidays" like unadulterated terror? If you're looking for an unconventional festive watch, I can't think of a better choice than the snow-covered Shining re-release. Duvall's Wendy paved the way for plenty of scream queens, but no one has yet to take her crown.

The Shining 45th anniversary re-release is out now in theaters. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.