Horror Classics Revisited: The Shining

Throughout the month of October, I'll be looking back on horror movies that many consider to be classics and seeing if they hold up. I'll be posting reviews every weekend this month. I encourage readers to leave comments and suggest which horror movie I should review next. This week: The Shining. Please be aware that this review assumes the reader has seen the film and will feature spoilers.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining immediately grips the viewer in its opening moments. From an overhead view, we see a lone, insignificant yellow car wind through a twisty mountain road. The car is surrounded by a maze of imposing trees. Kubrick has introduced the film's theme of isolation in one beautiful, succinct shot.

After this opening, we meet the film's main character, Jack Torrance. Jack Nicholson portrays Torrance as a man who seems rather troubled and angry at the beginning of the film, a major departure from Stephen King's novel, upon which the film is loosely based.

Nicholson is the best part about this movie, outside of Kubrick's visuals. Nicholson has always been great at playing crazy people, as he demonstrated in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Batman. Nicholson plays the part very straight without being one-note. Nicholson's facial expressions in this movie are so varied and distinct that you never feel as though he is repeating himself as an actor.

Despite Kubrick focusing mainly on Jack Torrance, the title itself actually has to do with Torrance's son, Danny, and his psychic ability. Early in the film, the hotel's cook Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) explains to young Danny that he is not the only who can "shine." Halloran and Danny share a mental connection through the shining; they can speak to each other without moving their mouths.

The shining also feeds Danny haunting images of the hotel's bloody history. Danny can sense the evil of the hotel before the rest of his family becomes aware of it. One of the film's most suspenseful sequences has Danny riding through the hotel hallways in circles on his toy tricycle. Kubrick uses a steadicam to film this scene, so that as the camera follows Danny from behind, the audience is never sure what is lurking around the next corner.

The main portion of the film deals with Jack's descent into madness and the resulting collapse of his family's sanity. Unlike other horror films, The Shining is very deliberately paced and builds slowly to its climax.

As Jack begins to be corrupted by the hotel, we are treated to many scenes where Jack interacts with spirits in the hotel. Are these spirits real? Are they hallucinations brought on by Jack's alcoholism? We never know for sure, but the scenes are still very effective.

My favorite scene in the film has Jack talking with Lloyd the bartender about his troubles. This scene is both hilarious and unsettling. Jack's way of explaining his violent actions is quite humorous, but in this scene Nicholson also shows Torrance to be a man who is beyond saving.

As usual with a Kubrick film, The Shining is very ambiguous as to what is actually happening. There are literally hundreds of interpretations about the ending of this movie. Having watched it three times, I can honestly say I don't know for sure what the ending is supposed to mean.

After chasing his son Danny through the hotel's maze with an axe, Jack Torrance collapses and freezes to death in a blizzard. Kubrick then cuts to "The Gold Room" in the hotel where we see a photo from July 4, 1921. Initially, we wonder why Kubrick lingers on a seemingly random image. Slowly, we become aware that Jack is in the photo from 1921, yet the film takes place decades ahead of this time period.

My interpretation is that the hotel has driven Jack insane and captured his soul after his death. Jack has become part of the hotel itself, thus he is now a part of its history. Therefore, he is in the 1921 photo along with the rest of the Overlook's spirits because the hotel has essentially trapped him there forever.

However, there are numerous other interpretations that make just as much sense. Kubrick himself seems to feel the end has to do with reincarnation. One interesting theory suggests that the entire film is a metaphor for the senseless genocide of Native Americans by early American settlers.

The Shining will be re-watched, discussed and analyzed for years to come. In this critic's opinion, The Shining is a very well made movie that features some memorably creepy imagery (twin girls, decomposing old lady) and intense acting. This movie is definitely not my favorite Kubrick film, nor one of my personal favorite horror movies. I appreciate its attention to detail, the offbeat score and the leisurely pace, but the film left me cold at some points during the third act. The Shining does hold up as a horror film I recommend strongly, but not one that I would consider a classic.