The Shining (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall.

In a Nutshell: The caretakers of an isolated hotel are terrorized by an evil presence.

Stanley Kubrick is typically (or in my experience) one of the first directors that burgeoning film students gravitate towards. And why not? He’s fairly modern, has a very consistent theme of dehumanization (that many seem to respond to) and has experimented in a wide variety of genres (sci-fi, horror, war, comedy, historical epic, family drama). Though since many people believe that filmmaking begins and ends with Mr. Kubrick, I find myself to be too critical of his work, which is unfair. Even his worst work is uncompromising, tightly directed and contains at least three or four iconic scenes. Of his entire filmography, The Shining would be in the bottom half, but still deserves its classic status.

Unlike most modern horror movies that pile on cheap shocks and gore, The Shining runs on a looming dread and a menacing atmosphere. The scenery takes on a life of its own, courtesy of Kubrick’s expansive framing, with shots that continually track the Torrance family (on par with the hotel’s portrayal as an omnipresent entity). Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance deviated a lot from Stephen King’s character, and rather than succumbing to cabin fever from his own alcoholic weaknesses, was instead a murderous psychopath all along. It is understandable why King and King fans would be upset at this change; Jack’s progression from family man to murderer feels less organic and more expected. It lessens the shock, but to judge the movie on its own terms, that Jack’s murderous tendencies were always there, then the film’s build to the rampage is as ominous as inevitability can be.

One element of the film that was unjustly criticized was Shelley Duvall as Jack’s wife Wendy. Duvall is out of her comfort zone in The Shining; her most frequent collaborator was Robert Altman whose freewheeling directing style could not be anymore different than Kubrick’s. Plus, King’s Wendy was also a different character, this time a more self-reliant and stronger woman. Duvall’s main acting challenge is to be flighty and hysterical, and Duvall is effective. It is hardly her fault the material has her do little more than wail, shriek and be bullied by Jack for half of the movie. Audiences and critics were also decisive of the film’s enigmatic qualities. Not much is explained about the hotel’s need to have Jack a murderer and several scenes that were explained thoroughly in the novel come off as non-sequiturs. There is no doubt this was deliberate, and it does show Kubrick’s faith in his audience to either form our own interpretation or take every mysterious occurrence at face value. Perhaps its instance on not explaining everything is exactly what makes it so enduring, so inexplicably horrifying. It manages a sinister mood that few have been able to replicate making The Shining a horror classic and that still beats the hell out of today’s horror flicks.