Excellent movie!

Rating: 10/10 (8 July 2013)

Most directors like to tie themselves down to one, maybe two genres when they make movies, some experiment with untypical stuff from time to time. But then there's Stanley Kubrick: a man that explored completely different topics with each of his films, yet never without leaving his thumbprint on the work. And while I don't adore every single one of his movies as much as some others, I can't find a single bad movie he made in his entire career. He may have been unfaithful to the source material he was given (Anthony Burgess and Stephen King both publicly vented their displeasure with his adaptions of A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, respectively), but he always created a uniquely interesting movie. The Shining is my personal favorite.
His 9th full-length movie and his only foray into horror confronts the audience with a seemingly normal American family in the 70's. The father, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson arguably doing the best turn in his career), is an unsuccessful writer that gladly accepts a job as a caretaker for an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains since he expects a lot of leisure time to focus on his new writing project. His wife, played by Shelley Duvall and his approximately 10-year-old son accompany him. The two will be the only people he sees during the freezing winter months.
Kubrick doesn't waste too much time with exposition; the movie starts to get quite frightening after a couple of minutes in. Actually, the opening scene already gives you goosebumps because of the ultra-chilling theme that would probably make a cat feeding its kittens seem frightening. We already get a glimpse of the prodigious set design and the huge symbolism after that, even though the real horror is yet to come. The audience, together with Jack, learns some ghastly background stories about the hotel and Nicholson's crazy grinning gives us justified reason to expect that his character isn't the sanest fellow in this movie. It is also revealed that Danny, Jack's son, is suffering from 'Shining', an illness/ability that gives him various abnormal skills which his parents seem to overlook.
Contrary to most horror movies, the audience can't predict what's going to happen in The Shining, a chilling masterpiece that doesn't make you jump out of your seat or disturb you by excessive amounts of gore, but totally works against the 'rules' of its genre. And still, Kubrick manages to scare the hell out of you and give you nightmares of two little twins standing in front of you or even naked women (if you've seen the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about). The American auteur understands the concept of psychological horror and perfects it in this movie: seeing some things from the perspective of the young boy Danny was a masterful move and the rides through the hotel never fail to creep me out. Those scenes in the first half of the movie actually have always scared me more than the dramatic climax, an undoubtedly intense and well-made chasing sequence that, however, suffers from a simple, almost banal structure.
It can be said that Kubrick created an extremely intense atmosphere in The Shining and that it's one of the most genre-defining horror movies of all time, yet there's another aspect of the film that should be treated with at least the same amount of attention. Its symbolism, greater than in any other Kubrick's movies, and so comprehensive that some fanatics made a feature-length documentary entirely focusing on the hidden meanings in it last year - fittingly named after the mysterious Room 237 in the original movie - is sheerly unbelievable. While some theories (Minotaurs; The Holocaust) really got carried away, I like to believe that many of the ideas, written on countless blogs in the Internet, were actually intended by this weird genius named Stanley Kubrick. The exceptionally long shooting process and the exasperation some cast members (especially Duvall and supporting star Scatman Crothers) developed are indicating that Kubrick was in fact aiming for absolute perfection with this movie. You don't even have to tinker with the movie on Internet blogs and studying each frame like the creators of Room 237 did isn't necessary either; you can be fascinated by The Shining just because of the strangeness that lies in every single scene. It's almost impossible to describe the brilliancy in some of them - Kubrick's use of colors, numbers, or the Steadicam are just perfect. Even the editing, a part of movies that most cinema-goers (including myself) tend to overlook, is fantastic.
Most of the cast members in the movie did quite good in the movie with Danny Lloyd acting impressively realistic for such a young age, but main actor Jack Nicholson is incredible at portraying the growing insanity of his character. His grumpy psychopath has got to be one of the most iconic villains in film and the fact that he didn't even get an Oscar nomination for this role is clearly one of the biggest snubs in the history of the Academy. And, of course, the "Here's Johnny" part wouldn't have been nearly as good without Nicholson who gives a gripping intensity to this and every other scene he's in. It's a bit sad that his on-screen wife Duvall is so completely unable to keep up with his terrific performance, but still, nominating her for a Razzie Award was a big exaggeration.
THE VERDICT: The Shining is an insane horror trip that is likely to haunt you and fascinate you on the same level. It's one of the most rewatchable movies and contains some of the best scenes in film history.