MOVIES · STORY NOTES

Stephen King: Four Horror Adaptations

Stephen King: Four Horror Adaptations brings together Carrie, It, The Shining, Doctor Sleep. This collection covers the works named in its breakdown.

FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

The story, including the ending.

These write-ups discuss major events and outcomes for this listed work. Each source and its coverage are identified below.

Complete listed story — includes the ending

Carrie

16-year-old Carrie White is a shy high school student in Chamberlain, Maine, who is frequently bullied by her peers. When Carrie experiences her first period while showering after gym class, she panics, having never been taught about menstruation. Her female classmates laugh and throw tampons and sanitary pads at her until the gym teacher, Miss Collins, intervenes. Her abusive and religiously fanatical mother, Margaret, tells Carrie that her period was caused by sin and locks Carrie in a "prayer closet" to pray to God for forgiveness. At school, Miss Collins reprimands Carrie's tormentors by punishing them with exercise detention, threatening to suspend them and revoke their prom tickets if they refuse. Carrie's longtime bully, Chris Hargensen, eventually refuses and gets banned from the prom.
Plotting vengeance against Carrie, Chris and her delinquent boyfriend Billy Nolan break into a farm and slaughter pigs to drain their blood into a bucket, which they place above the school's stage in the gym. Carrie realizes she can control objects with her mind when she is upset. She learns that her abilities result from telekinesis and begins researching books on the subject. Sue Snell, a classmate who feels remorseful for her part in bullying Carrie, asks her popular athlete boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to invite Carrie to prom. Carrie believes the proposition is a prank, but he insists it is genuine, and she eventually accepts. When Carrie informs Margaret of her plans to attend the prom, Margaret angrily forbids her. Despite her protests, Carrie rebels as Margaret witnesses evidence of her daughter's telekinetic powers, denouncing Carrie as a witch corrupted by sin.
During prom, Chris and Billy hide under the stage while her best friend, Norma, and other conspirators switch the ballots to ensure Carrie wins the Prom Queen title. As Carrie stands onstage with Tommy, finally beginning to feel accepted by her peers, Sue realizes Chris and Billy's plan and tries to intervene. Miss Collins spots Sue and, thinking that she is plotting a prank, throws her out of the prom. Chris and Billy douse Carrie in the pigs' blood before sneaking out of the school. The empty bucket hits an angered Tommy on the head, knocking him unconscious. Norma begins laughing with other students, causing Carrie to hallucinate that everyone is mocking her, believing it was their plan all along. She telekinetically seals the exits and attacks the students with a fire hose, injuring several and killing Norma. A falling basketball backboard crushes Miss Collins after she and the students attempt to carry Tommy's body, and Carrie electrocutes her principal and English teacher, one of the two bursting into flames, setting the gym on fire. She exits the burning school and seals the doors behind her, leaving the trapped staff and classmates to die. As Carrie walks home, Chris attempts to run her over, but Carrie causes the car to swerve and roll over. Carrie ruptures the gas tank, and the car explodes, killing Chris and Billy.
After Carrie bathes herself at home, Margaret reveals that Carrie was conceived when her husband was drunk, an act that Margaret admits she enjoyed. She then stabs Carrie in the back with a kitchen knife. Carrie telekinetically sends knives flying toward Margaret, killing her; then she destroys the house and dies.
Some time later, Sue, who was the sole survivor of that night, has a dream where she goes to lay flowers on the charred remains of Carrie's home. Upon the remains stands a "For Sale" sign, vandalized in black paint with the words: "Carrie White burns in Hell!" Suddenly, Carrie's bloody arm reaches from beneath the rubble and grabs Sue, who, screaming, wakes up in her bed, as her mother tries to comfort her from the nightmare.

It

In October 1988, twelve-year-old Bill Denbrough makes a paper sailboat for his seven-year-old brother Georgie. Georgie sails the boat along rainy streets, only to have it fall down a storm drain. Attempting to retrieve it, Georgie sees a clown in the drain, who introduces himself as "Pennywise the Dancing Clown". Pennywise bites off Georgie's arm and drags him into the sewer.
The following summer, Bill and his friends Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Stanley Uris run afoul of older bullies Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins, Patrick Hockstetter, and Victor Criss. Bill calculates that his brother's body may have washed up in the marshy wasteland "The Barrens". He investigates with his friends, believing Georgie may still be alive. New in town, Bill's classmate Ben Hanscom learns that unexplained tragedies and child disappearances have plagued Derry for centuries. Fleeing Bowers' posse, Ben meets Bill's group in the Barrens. They find the sneaker of missing girl Betty Ripsom. Patrick is killed by drowned children while searching the sewers.
Bill and Ben develop feelings for bullied girl Beverly Marsh. The group befriends orphan Mike Hanlon, having rescued him from Bowers. Each member of the group has encountered terrifying manifestations of Pennywise: Ben is chased by a headless undead boy, Beverly is attacked by a sink spewing blood, Eddie is chased by a rotting leper, Stan witnesses a painting of a woman coming alive, Mike relives his parents burning alive, and a phantom of Georgie haunts Bill. No adults see what they witness. Dubbing themselves "The Losers Club", they realize they are all being stalked by the same entity, which they dub "It". They deduce that It appears as their individual worst fears, awakening from hibernation every 27 years to feed on the children of Derry, traveling via the sewer lines. In his garage, Bill shows the Losers blueprints of Derry's sewer lines, which lead to an old well under an abandoned house on Neibolt Street. After Pennywise attacks them in the garage, the group attempts to confront It in the Neibolt house, only to be separated and terrorized by their fears. It charges at them, but Beverly stabs It in the head with a metal spike. Pennywise retreats after injuring Ben. The group flees; traumatized by their experience, they separate.
Weeks later, after Beverly confronts and incapacitates her sexually abusive father, Pennywise abducts her. The Losers return to the abandoned house to rescue her. Bowers, who has murdered his abusive father after being driven insane by Pennywise, attacks the group; Mike pushes Bowers down the well. The Losers descend into the sewers and find Pennywise's lair, which contains decayed circus props and children's belongings, above which the bodies of It's child victims float in mid-air. Beverly, catatonic after being exposed to Deadlights inside It's gaping mouth, is restored to consciousness when Ben kisses her. Bill encounters Georgie, but realizes he is Pennywise in disguise. Pennywise takes Bill hostage, offering to spare the others and hibernate if they abandon Bill. The Losers reject this, battling Pennywise while overcoming their various fears. The Losers beat Pennywise before Beverly stabs It in the face with a broken pipe. It retreats, falling down a well. Bill finds Georgie's bloodstained raincoat, and the group comfort him as he cries.
As summer ends, Beverly informs the group of a vision she had while catatonic, of them fighting Pennywise again as adults. The Losers swear a blood oath that they will return if Pennywise ever returns. After the others make their goodbyes and disperse, Beverly and Bill discuss her moving away to live with her aunt. Bill reveals his feelings and they kiss.

The Shining

Jack Torrance takes a caretaker position to look after the remote Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rocky Mountains while it is closed for the winter. On arrival, hotel manager Stuart Ullman informs Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, killed his wife, two young daughters and himself in the hotel a decade prior.
At home in Boulder, Jack's son Danny has a premonition and seizure; Jack's wife, Wendy, tells the doctor about a past incident when Jack accidentally dislocated Danny's shoulder during a drunken rage. Jack has been sober ever since. Before leaving for the seasonal break, the Overlook's head chef, Dick Hallorann, informs Danny of a telepathic ability the two share, which Hallorann's grandmother called "shining". He tells Danny that the hotel also "shines" due to its residual and unpleasant history and warns him to avoid room 237.
A month passes, and Danny starts having frightening visions, including those of the murdered Grady sisters. Meanwhile, Jack's mental health deteriorates; he suffers from writer's block, is prone to violent outbursts, and has dreams of killing his family. Danny gets lured to room 237 by unseen forces, and Wendy later finds him with signs of physical trauma, for which she blames Jack. Jack defiantly sulks in the ballroom, where ghostly bartender Lloyd entices him back to drinking. Wendy tells him that Danny was attacked by a "crazy woman" in room 237. Jack investigates and encounters a hideous female ghost in the bathroom, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. He blames Danny for inflicting the bruises on himself and reacts angrily when Wendy suggests leaving the hotel. Danny enters a trance and telepathically contacts Hallorann. Returning to the ballroom, Jack finds it filled with ghostly figures, including waiter Delbert Grady, who urges Jack to "correct" his wife and child.
Wendy finds Jack's manuscript written with nothing but countless repetitions of the proverb "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". When Jack threatens her life, Wendy knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry, but she and Danny are snowed in—Jack previously sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat. Back in their private apartment, Danny begins to chant, from a murmur, "red rum" more and more loudly ("red RUM") and writes it out in lipstick on the bathroom door. Wendy sees the word in the mirror which shows that it spells MURDER in reverse, and she panics.
Grady frees Jack, who goes after Wendy and Danny with an axe. Taking shelter in the bathroom, Wendy fights off Jack with a knife when he tries to break through the door; Danny escapes out the bathroom window. Hallorann, having flown back to Colorado from his winter home in Florida, reaches the hotel by snowcat. Jack ambushes and murders him with the axe, then pursues Danny into an expansive hedge maze on the hotel grounds. With trepidation Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering the hotel's ghosts, Hallorann's bloody corpse, and a vision of cascading blood from an elevator similar to Danny's premonition. Danny carefully backtracks in the snow to mislead Jack and hides behind a snowdrift. While Jack rushes ahead without a trail to follow and becomes lost, Danny exits the maze and is found by Wendy. The two depart the Overlook in Hallorann's snowcat, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the maze. Meanwhile, a photograph in the hotel hallway pictures a man, by all appearances Jack, standing amidst a crowd of party revelers from July 4, 1921.

Doctor Sleep

After his family's ordeal at the Overlook Hotel, the traumatized Danny Torrance is followed by its ghostly inhabitants seeking his "shine". When Danny is 8 and after an incident with the ghost lady in his bathroom, Dick Hallorann teaches him how to capture them in psychic "lockboxes". In 2011, Dan has become an alcoholic to suppress his abilities. After moving to New Hampshire, Dan recovers through Alcoholics Anonymous. Working as a hospice orderly, Dan uses the shining to comfort dying patients, earning the nickname "Doctor Sleep". A young girl named Abra Stone, whose shine is even greater than Dan's, telepathically reaches out to him, and the two form a psychic friendship.
A separate plotline follows the True Knot, an old cult of psychic vampires led by Rose the Hat. They feed on "steam", a psychic essence released by torturing and killing people who possess the shining. By 2019, as the number of potential prey dwindles, the group has begun starving. They recruit teenage Andi, who has the power of suggestion, but their gruesome killing of a young baseball player traumatizes Abra, who alerts Dan. Rose, who senses Abra's clairvoyance, and later becomes connected to her while shopping, becomes intrigued. Rose infiltrates Abra's dream but is trapped by Abra, who proceeds to rummage through Rose's memory to learn about the cult. Convinced that Abra's immense powers will supply them with steam for years to come, Rose sends the True Knot members after her.
Abra divines the crime scene's location and meets Dan in New Hampshire to give him the information and implore him to help her stop the True Knot. Dan recruits his friend Billy and Abra's father, Dave, to help. They set up an ambush and kill most of the cult, but Billy is killed by Andi before she dies and Dave is killed by Rose's partner, Crow Daddy, who kidnaps Abra. Dan possesses Abra and causes Crow Daddy's car to crash, killing him.
Knowing Rose is coming for them, Dan brings Abra to the now-abandoned Overlook, which is equally dangerous for Rose. Dan sets the hotel's boiler to overload, while briefly confronting an apparition of his father and rejecting an offer to drink.
Rose arrives and overpowers Dan, but he releases the Overlook's occupants from his lockboxes. Drawn to Rose's power, the ghosts devour her before possessing Dan in a bid to make him kill Abra so they can feed on her steam. He goes to the boiler room and regains control before the hotel can make him deactivate it. As fire erupts, he sees a vision of himself as a child being comforted by his mother Wendy. Abra escapes as the Overlook burns down.
Sometime later, Abra speaks to Dan's spirit, who comforts her, telling her to "shine on". Abra tells her mother that Dan and Dave are okay. She then confronts an Overlook ghost and imprisons it in her psychic lockbox.
Sources and content license

Source and revision history ↗ · Exact listed stories combined in catalog order. Sources retain their stated license; formatting and headings adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Carrie (1976 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, It (2017 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, The Shining (film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Doctor Sleep (2019 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license

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MOVIESCarrie1 movieView listed scope

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MOVIESIt1 movieView listed scope

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MOVIESThe Shining1 movieView listed scope

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MOVIESDoctor Sleep1 movieView listed scope

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