The Shining

Just like with Lolita, Kubrick improves on the source material by remaining ambiguous instead of concrete. This is certainly the strength of films = the ability to not explain. It is never entirely clear in the film if the ghosts are real or in the family's head. OK, the ghosts are ostensibly real, but Kubrick is more interested in the psychological dynamic of three people isolated from the outside world than Indian burial grounds and psychic powers. King himself made a crap mini-series for American TV which was far more faithful to his original and ended up being the lame "haunted hotel" campfire story that the writer probably wanted, rather than the terrifying, halucinatory Oedipal nightmare Kubrick made.