Written by: Kevin Berge
Clearly, you're overreating here, Wendy. Jack said he's never hurt you. Does that look the face of a man that would hurt you? (Image Courtesy of: mentalfloss.com)
Quick Take: The Shining creeps through each frame of its seemingly endless tale of possessed terror and does so in a way that is so truly uncanny that it is like nothing else. Stanley Kubrick's film is imperfectly brilliant and a must-watch experience for its sheer unrivaled unnerving presence.
***This is a focused review on a Stanley Kubrick classic from 1980 that will look at all its aspects. It contains some spoilers, but it is more focused on its thematic relevance. Still, those who have not seen The Shining will likely be lost in the review.***
Stephen King is an integral part of entertainment culture. Just this year, five Stephen King film adaptations have been release with It becoming its own cultural phenomenon. As someone who aspires to publish a novel one day, it is easy to admire King's dedication to his craft, including an incredible 56 books over the course of just 43 years.
King's success though cannot just be attributed to quantity of work. Combining his creative sensibilities with a human focus, his best work is deeply personal but also wildly imagined. This can be seen in his earliest work which is also some of his most successful including his third novel, The Shining.
The Shining is directly about a hotel driven a writer mad and turning against his family. However, like many other King books, you can also see this is a story about King himself, a fear of what he could become if his own innate fears and frustrations boiled over. It's deeply personal.
However, this has little to do with the Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining. Considered one of the true classics adapted from King's work, Kubrick's The Shining is perhaps the adaptation King hates the most. This is understandable because the last thing The Shining is is personal.
Much like Kubrick's most enduring classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is easy to get lost in what this movie isn't. When I was first introduced to the movie, I was always told it was almost a comedy. Initial reception of the film panned it as being ridiculous and over-the-top. I could see early on where this sentiment came from.
The Shining begins off center. Every piece presented is unnervingly ill-fitting. In a career of over-the-top performances, this is Jack Nicholson's (One Flew Over the Cooky's Nest) most flashy. Before anything has even happened, Shelley Duvall (Annie Hall) already seems run down and tired.
Stephen King is an integral part of entertainment culture. Just this year, five Stephen King film adaptations have been release with It becoming its own cultural phenomenon. As someone who aspires to publish a novel one day, it is easy to admire King's dedication to his craft, including an incredible 56 books over the course of just 43 years.
King's success though cannot just be attributed to quantity of work. Combining his creative sensibilities with a human focus, his best work is deeply personal but also wildly imagined. This can be seen in his earliest work which is also some of his most successful including his third novel, The Shining.
The Shining is directly about a hotel driven a writer mad and turning against his family. However, like many other King books, you can also see this is a story about King himself, a fear of what he could become if his own innate fears and frustrations boiled over. It's deeply personal.
However, this has little to do with the Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining. Considered one of the true classics adapted from King's work, Kubrick's The Shining is perhaps the adaptation King hates the most. This is understandable because the last thing The Shining is is personal.
Much like Kubrick's most enduring classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is easy to get lost in what this movie isn't. When I was first introduced to the movie, I was always told it was almost a comedy. Initial reception of the film panned it as being ridiculous and over-the-top. I could see early on where this sentiment came from.
The Shining begins off center. Every piece presented is unnervingly ill-fitting. In a career of over-the-top performances, this is Jack Nicholson's (One Flew Over the Cooky's Nest) most flashy. Before anything has even happened, Shelley Duvall (Annie Hall) already seems run down and tired.
All they wanted to do was play. Just play, Danny. (Image Courtesy of: nerdist.com)
This is all intentional though to begin by putting the viewer on edge. The odd patchwork of non-original music Kubrick has his music editor Gordon Stainforth place into the movie makes each scene unnerving, further cementing these creeping feeling of unease.
The movie uses the elements of a film, but these elements do not fit cleanly the way they are expected. It creates an uncanny valley effect. It is easy to laugh at first, but it grows more and more unsettling. It begins to grow so off-kilter that you begin to wonder if the elements that make up the movie even come from this world.
The heart of this unease is the Overlook Hotel, an expansive isolated building where Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) have been paid to stay to look after the empty hotel during the winter. This hotel seems normal at first, but the camera continues to let it expand, exploring its halls as if they were endless.
I noticed that little had happened before I felt shivers. I was unnerved without a reason to be. That same feeling stayed with me as the horrors of the hotel began to emerge. I was not afraid of any one moment. I was just slowly growing more uneasy.
This is Kubrick's movie as his camera is the star. He creates a movie that is about horror and madness without ever using the conventions of the genre. This movie does not even consider jump scares. It barely uses frightening imagery. Instead, it utilizes space, empty space as its monster.
The performances in the movie are imperfect, oddly surreal, but this is Kubrick's intention. He is said to have put his actors through rigorous and unseemly trials in creating this film, torturing them mentally by putting them through endless shots until they themselves are exhausted and off-kilter.
While I would not say that Nicholson, Duvall, or Lloyd are brilliant in this movie, their performances are exactly what is needed to shape the film. Whether it is right or not, they are also pieces made to do their part, fully forced to embrace the madness on display.
The movie uses the elements of a film, but these elements do not fit cleanly the way they are expected. It creates an uncanny valley effect. It is easy to laugh at first, but it grows more and more unsettling. It begins to grow so off-kilter that you begin to wonder if the elements that make up the movie even come from this world.
The heart of this unease is the Overlook Hotel, an expansive isolated building where Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) have been paid to stay to look after the empty hotel during the winter. This hotel seems normal at first, but the camera continues to let it expand, exploring its halls as if they were endless.
I noticed that little had happened before I felt shivers. I was unnerved without a reason to be. That same feeling stayed with me as the horrors of the hotel began to emerge. I was not afraid of any one moment. I was just slowly growing more uneasy.
This is Kubrick's movie as his camera is the star. He creates a movie that is about horror and madness without ever using the conventions of the genre. This movie does not even consider jump scares. It barely uses frightening imagery. Instead, it utilizes space, empty space as its monster.
The performances in the movie are imperfect, oddly surreal, but this is Kubrick's intention. He is said to have put his actors through rigorous and unseemly trials in creating this film, torturing them mentally by putting them through endless shots until they themselves are exhausted and off-kilter.
While I would not say that Nicholson, Duvall, or Lloyd are brilliant in this movie, their performances are exactly what is needed to shape the film. Whether it is right or not, they are also pieces made to do their part, fully forced to embrace the madness on display.
How can you fear that face? That's such a friendly happy face. (Image Courtesy of: bloody-disgusting.com)
What is The Shining really about? That question can be debated ad nauseam. The question has been expansive enough to warrant its own movie, Room 237. Whether this is a supernatural ghost story of a hotel turning against a boy with psychic gifts, a tale of a family going slowly mad, or something else altogether, it is powerful.
This is a disturbing experience in that it embraces cruelty and madness while being surprisingly protective of displayed violence. The imagery even at its most gory is not overly sensationalized. Meanwhile, there are absurdities that can shift away from the straight horror.
However, King is right in calling the movie unfeeling. Jack, Wendy, and Danny are not much developed over the course of the film, and their connection as a family is largely empty. Jack is portrayed as an off-kilter former drunk who has abused his son before.
This does not take away from the merits of the film though but rarely emphasizes what it is. King's name may be forever linked to the movie, but this is not King story. This Jack is not King's surrogate thus he does not need King's protection and ultimate redemption. This Jack is a cruel, easily corrupted monster.
This is the greatest kind of horror, the type you must either desperately deflect or be captured by far beyond the end of its run time. It makes you wonder at every turn, consumed by the endless halls of that frightening hotel. It draws you into an endless series of questions with no answer.
Those questions and the images they conjure are the nightmare fuel that creates lasting horror. There may be scarier movies, more faithful King adaptations, more perfect films, and more clear-cut tales, but there may never be a more cerebral and creepy experience than The Shining.
This is a disturbing experience in that it embraces cruelty and madness while being surprisingly protective of displayed violence. The imagery even at its most gory is not overly sensationalized. Meanwhile, there are absurdities that can shift away from the straight horror.
However, King is right in calling the movie unfeeling. Jack, Wendy, and Danny are not much developed over the course of the film, and their connection as a family is largely empty. Jack is portrayed as an off-kilter former drunk who has abused his son before.
This does not take away from the merits of the film though but rarely emphasizes what it is. King's name may be forever linked to the movie, but this is not King story. This Jack is not King's surrogate thus he does not need King's protection and ultimate redemption. This Jack is a cruel, easily corrupted monster.
This is the greatest kind of horror, the type you must either desperately deflect or be captured by far beyond the end of its run time. It makes you wonder at every turn, consumed by the endless halls of that frightening hotel. It draws you into an endless series of questions with no answer.
Those questions and the images they conjure are the nightmare fuel that creates lasting horror. There may be scarier movies, more faithful King adaptations, more perfect films, and more clear-cut tales, but there may never be a more cerebral and creepy experience than The Shining.