Jack Torrance interviews with Overlook manager Stuart Ullman for the winter caretaker position at the Colorado hotel.

Hotel engineer Watson walks Jack through the boiler system, warning that unchecked pressure could cause a catastrophic explosion.

Driving toward the Overlook, Danny trembles and turns pale at his first glimpse of the hotel across the canyon.

Cook Dick Hallorann silently projects a thought at Danny in the kitchen, revealing that both share a psychic ability.

Hallorann privately explains the shining to Danny, warns him to stay out of Room 217, and says the hotel's ghosts cannot truly harm him.

Snow falls and seals the Overlook off from the outside world, trapping the Torrance family inside for the winter.

Danny enters the forbidden Room 217 and is physically choked by the animated corpse of a dead woman in the bathtub.

Wendy discovers Danny sitting catatonic on the bathtub's edge with visible bruises ringing his neck and suspects Jack hurt him.

Danny uses his shining to send a desperate psychic distress call to Dick Hallorann all the way in Florida.

At the Colorado Lounge bar, ghost bartender Lloyd serves Jack real drinks and Jack breaks his long sobriety.

Wendy breaks a bottle over Jack's head and she and Danny drag the unconscious Jack into the pantry, locking him inside.

The ghost of Delbert Grady unlocks the pantry door from outside, freeing Jack to resume hunting Danny and Wendy.

Jack chases Wendy through the hotel with a roque mallet, breaking two of her ribs and fracturing her shin.

Jack briefly breaks free of the hotel's control and begs Danny to run, telling him he loves him.

Jack fails to vent the boiler pressure in time and the Overlook explodes, killing him inside the burning hotel.

Jack Torrance accepts a winter caretaker job at the isolated Overlook Hotel, bringing his wife Wendy and his psychic young son Danny. Upon arrival, cook Dick Hallorann privately recognizes Danny's powerful gift and warns him about the hotel's dangers before leaving for the winter. Once heavy snow seals the family inside, the hotel's malevolent force grows steadily stronger, feeding on Danny's abilities and producing increasingly real supernatural threats. Jack succumbs to the hotel's manipulation, begins drinking again, and turns violently against the family he once hoped to protect. Wendy manages to lock Jack in the pantry, but a hotel ghost frees him and he pursues his family with a roque mallet through the halls. Dick Hallorann arrives just in time to help Wendy and Danny escape before the hotel's neglected boiler explodes, destroying the Overlook with Jack inside.

The Torrance family's path from arrival to catastrophe at the Overlook Hotel.

Ullman tells Jack about Delbert Grady, a former caretaker who went mad over one winter and killed his family.

Jack uses a phone booth at a mall to call Al Shockley and thank him for securing the caretaker job.

Wendy lies awake remembering the morning after Danny's arm was broken, when she nearly demanded a divorce from Jack.

Ullman leads the Torrances on a grand tour and Danny sees bloodstained wallpaper briefly appear in the Presidential Suite.

Ullman drives away from the hotel, leaving the Torrance family completely alone inside the massive empty building.

Jack discovers a large wasps' nest while reshingling the roof and destroys it with a bug bomb.

Jack gives Danny the seemingly dead wasps' nest as an interesting decoration to keep in his bedroom.

Surviving wasps crawl from the nest overnight and sting Danny eleven times while he sleeps.

Jack finds a scrapbook in the hotel basement revealing the Overlook's long history of violence, scandal, and mob activity.

Danny stands outside Room 217 with the passkey already in his hand but pulls himself away, remembering his promise to Hallorann.

Al Shockley calls Jack with a hard ultimatum: abandon the planned exposé book or lose the caretaker job entirely.

The elevator travels between floors on its own and Wendy finds a paper party streamer and a mask inside.

Hallorann battles the animated hedge lion in the Overlook driveway, suffering deep wounds before burning the creature with gasoline.

Jack sneaks up on the newly arrived Hallorann and knocks him unconscious with the roque mallet.

Hallorann drives Wendy and Danny away from the burning Overlook on a snowmobile as rangers approach from Sidewinder.

Even before the supernatural terror fully erupts, a series of warnings and revelations signal the danger closing in on the Torrances. Ullman's account of the murderous Grady family and Jack's discovery of a scrapbook exposing the hotel's criminal history establish the Overlook as a place with an appetite for violence. Early domestic incidents — a wasp attack on Danny and his near-entry into the forbidden Room 217 — show the hotel probing the family's weaknesses. Al Shockley's ultimatum over the planned exposé book deepens Jack's festering grievances and accelerates his psychological decline. As winter tightens its grip, supernatural events multiply: the elevator runs on its own, Danny is chased by animated hedge animals, and Dick Hallorann fights through a hedge lion attack to reach the hotel. Hallorann ultimately drives Wendy and Danny to safety on a snowmobile as rangers converge and the Overlook burns behind them.

The behind-the-scenes incidents and discoveries that shaped the Torrance family's doomed winter.

Danny has a terrifying trance in which Tony shows him the word REDRUM and a hammer-wielding figure chasing him through hotel halls.

On the roof after destroying the wasps' nest, Jack tells himself he is getting better in a moment of genuine hope.

Danny falls into a trance in the family bathroom, muttering about REDRUM and the roque court, and Jack breaks the door open.

Dr. Edmonds examines Danny in Sidewinder and professionally dismisses precognition while acknowledging Danny clearly knows things he has no way of knowing.

Jack calls Ullman from a Sidewinder drugstore payphone to threaten an exposé, then wonders if he was trying to get himself fired.

Danny tells Wendy that Tony will not come when summoned and privately thinks the word not yet when asked if Jack is drinking.

Jack watches the hedge animals shift positions in the playground and realizes they only move when he is not looking at them.

Jack dreams of his abusive father's voice urging him to kill his family and wakes to find he has smashed the CB radio.

Jack goes to Room 217 to investigate Danny's claim and tells Wendy and Danny the room is completely empty.

Jack wakes from a nightmare in which he beat George Hatfield's face with a mallet to find himself standing over Danny's cot.

Jack realizes the hotel wants him specifically because, as a living man, he alone is capable of physically harming Danny.

Danny sees the word REDRUM written on the bathroom mirror in lipstick and realizes its reflection in another mirror spells MURDER.

At the ghostly masquerade party, Delbert Grady tells Jack that Danny must be corrected and that an outside party is coming to help.

Danny sees Tony closely enough for the first time to recognize him as an older version of himself sending back warnings.

Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann recover at a Maine resort where Hallorann tells Danny to keep going and love his mother.

Danny's earliest premonitions of REDRUM and a hammer-wielding pursuer establish a tone of dread long before the family reaches the Overlook. A doctor's examination raises skeptical questions about Danny's abilities while Jack's mounting frustrations — with Ullman, with his forced sobriety, and with the hotel itself — quietly push him toward collapse. Critical turning points reveal the hotel tightening its grip: hedge animals that move unseen, a CB radio destroyed in a fugue state, and Danny's chilling discovery that REDRUM reads MURDER in a mirror. Jack's psychological unraveling mirrors his own abusive father as the hotel exploits every crack in his character, and a key revelation confirms that he alone, as a living man, is the weapon the hotel needs to claim Danny. Danny finally recognizes that his mysterious guide Tony is a future version of himself, sent back through time with urgent warnings. The story closes in a quiet Maine epilogue where a grieving Danny is counseled by Hallorann to keep going and hold on to love.

The key decisions, discoveries, and psychological shifts that unraveled the Torrance family.