Still shining thirty years later- and forever and ever...

Rating: 10/10 (2 October 2009)

Continuing my reviewing of horror and Halloween-themed shows throughout October, here's one of the all-time great horror flicks: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Based on a novel by Stephen King, the movie tells the story of a family who look after a closed hotel during the winter, only for the ghosts of the hotel to drive the father Jack (Jack Nicholson) insane and determined to kill his wife and young son.
Oh, right, and one other thing: the kid is capable of telepathy and precognition, something that seems unrelated to the ghostly phenomena, as if the two things were thrown into the mix just to make for interesting results. Or that may not be the case: according to the character Dick Hallorann, all these things are related to shining, something supernatural and slightly incomprehensible that certain people and places are able to do.
First, dialogue about a past tragedy at the hotel allows for some foreshadowing of ghosts and murder to come. Nicholson plays a convincing psychopath, originally a man who seems to hate his family. There are early signs of insanity (maybe a little too early) as he smiles while talking about cannibalism on his way to the hotel. On the other hand, he does scream at a nightmare of himself killing his wife and son. The ghosts fan the flames, but what are their motives? The novel explains them, or so I've heard, but the movie keeps them a mystery. Maybe we're expected to understand that ghosts, like people, can be malicious.
Certain parts of the film, like seeing the boy on his little bicycle exploring the hotel, are well-shot and nearly hypnotic. The horror itself unfolds in some surreal ways; a sexy naked woman turns into a hag, a metaphor of Jack being seduced by the hotel's evil. An elevator door opens and blood pours out: perhaps this is the blood of native Americans, and Bill Blakemore suggested the whole movie is a metaphor for the violence of whites against natives. It would explain the otherwise inexplicable reference to white man's burden. The ghost girls are eerie, as are the ghosts Wendy sees, and the "novel" Jack writes. In the end, Jack freezes while his family escapes. Kubrick evidently knew what Shakespeare knew- that killing off tragic characters is often the only way to go.
Happy Halloween.