The most horrifying horror movie of them all..

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2002)

The Shining is unrelenting in its effort to scare the living daylights out of its audience. Stanely Kubrick is ruthless in grabbing every frame, every scene, and every cue to keep hammering on the nerves of the audience. Not even a single moment is wasted on humor or sentiment. Stanley Kubrick is sincere in his aim to scare and scare he really does.
The plot is simple. Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) has to spend 5 months alone with his wife and young kid in a hotel in the lofty heights of Colarado.He has the job of looking after the place when it is closed for the winter. The hotel was built on an ancient Indian burial site and the previous caretaker went completely insane and after butchering his wife and two daughters, he put a shotgun to his mouth and shot himself.
This is one movie, which is extremely beautiful, yet scary at the same time. Kubrick's genius can be seen in almost every frame of the movie. The opening scenes, extremely beautiful give a wide panoramic view of the mountains, yet focus on a small subject like a lone car motoring along the mountains. This somehow manages to create a very lonely, eerie atmosphere. The hotel is extremely luxurious, brightly lit but is also very odd and eerie. Kubrick manages this by walls that are painted white and very eccentric carpets having intricate designs, which somehow offsets the balance of the place. White walls with orange carpets having a very zig zag design seem very odd. So is the feature of every room in the hotel. The kitchen also has the same kind of effect having a combination of white and pale green walls. Every room in the hotel has a luxurious yet distinctively uneasy appearance.
Kubrick just takes this and makes a movie that completely leaves you exhausted after 2 and half hours. Jack Nicholson is fantastic. Shelley Duvall although at first glance is seen miscast comes into her own in displaying the helplessness and hysteria in having to cope with her husbands insanity. The movie is a roller coaster hitting at the viewers nerves at every instant and works its way to the finale, which just leaves you a little flustered. Stanely Kubrick although explaining very detail leaves a few unanswered questions, which will be talked about as long as the movie is watched.
Altogether, 'The Shining' is one of the most scariest movie out there.....