Editorials
Why ‘The Shining’ Deserves Another Adaptation
Stephen King has famously denounced Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining, citing it as a poor adaptation that completely misses the point of his source material. Now, while I think Kubrick’s version is a damn fine horror film (one of the best of its era, actually), I have to agree with King. Look, before things get all hot and bothered in the comments section, hear me out: you can enjoy the same story in different mediums for different reasons.
Real quick, here’s the gist of the story…
The Shining (in all its iterations) tells the story of Jack Torrance, a struggling writer and recovering alcoholic, who wisely decides to bring his family to live in a haunted hotel in Colorado for the winter while he watches over the place and deals with increasingly aggressive ghosts.
Now let’s talk about the source material…
Stephen King’s 1977 novel is a masterclass piece of horror fiction and is the second scariest haunted house novel I’ve ever read – next to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. There is a slow, methodical burn to King’s story. We see a family, trying their best to keep things together, slowly being torn apart by evil forces who want to manipulate and/or consume each of them for different reasons. And while that alone should be enough to populate a novel with enough pants-shitting moments of sheer terror to satisfy any horror fan, where the book really shines (pun totally intended) is how it tackles the theme of addiction.
Not to get too personal, but the way King handles the quiet denial and hidden demons of alcoholism shook me to the bone, and while these things are presented through the somewhat heavy-handed analogy of literal ghosts, they feel way too true to life. The way in which Jack’s wife, Wendy and their young son, Danny deal with their father’s diminishing insanity and inevitable relapse is as heartbreaking as it is terrifying. As a reader, you want Jack to overcome these figurative (and literal) demons. He’s a likable protagonist who, deep down, loves his family and doesn’t really want to kill his wife with a Roque mallet or let the malevolent spirits of the hotel consume his son for his psychic abilities.
But then again, actions speak louder than words, don’t they Jack?
In Stanley Kubrick’s version…
The emotional core of the story is ripped out and replaced with cold and calculated horror in The Shining 1980. There is no buildup of tension and no time to get to know the characters or their quirks: just unrelenting unease from the first frame to the last. The moment we meet Jack Torrance, the audience is already unsettled. This is mostly due to Jack Nicholson’s iconic portrayal of the character. Unfortunately, we don’t really care about Jack. There’s no emotional investment. Sure, he’s fascinating, but not in the way his literary counterpart is. This Jack is callous and wicked and seems like he’s just waiting for an excuse to get all choppy with an axe. And sadly, Wendy and Danny also suffer from being stripped of a lot of their complexities.
These things don’t make a bad film. Quite the contrary. Kubrick’s film is simply astounding. It constantly fills the viewer with dread and never lets up. In fact, it’s the minimalist approach to the source material and the plot choices designed to subvert the audience’s expectations (poor, poor old Dick Hallorann) that make it a masterpiece of horror cinema. But as an adaptation, it just doesn’t work. Being a huge King fan, it took me years to appreciate the film for what it was and separate it from the book that scared the hell out of me when I was way too young to read it. Kubrick’s movie is less an adaptation and more of an interpretation.
Personally, I’d like to see something that captures the heart of the book while maintaining the horror that Kubrick committed to celluloid. The film is like a serial killer that has been turned into a Romero-style zombie. Sure they’re scary lumbering around, but man, when they were alive, that’s a different story altogether.
Hey, what about that Steven Weber thing?
I’m glad you asked. In 1997, horror director and Stephen King aficionado Mick Garris took another stab at the property by adapting the novel into a three-part TV miniseries on ABC. And with King writing the teleplay things should have gone… well, way better. While I will say that Steven Weber’s everyman portrayal of Jack Torrance was not only good, but pretty damn accurate to the book, and the family dynamic felt real (albeit wooden), the miniseries just doesn’t have the emotional heft of the book or the sheer terror of Kubrick’s film. It’s languid somewhere between.
Also, those CGI hedge animals were… well, a product of their time.
So… what next?
I feel like striking a balance would be perfect. As much as I love the novel, I’ll be the first to admit it’s not perfect (again, 2nd best haunted house novel). Like most of King’s work, it sometimes meanders like a herd of cats. Perhaps applying Kubrick’s minimalist approach (no need for a six-hour series), while keeping the emotional impact, would make for the perfect blend of horror and drama. I say allow the characters to become fully realized before putting them through the wringer. And with such a small cast, there’s no reason this can’t be done effectively.
In the hands of a savvy director who excels at working with small groups of people and family strife (Mike Flanagan, anyone?), and populated with likable actors, we might just have a perfect adaptation on our hands. The Shining doesn’t need so much a remake as it does a refocus.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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