Kubrick's best horror.....Kubrick's only horror...

Rating: 10/10 (27 March 2011)

Stanley Kubrick turns his ever-precise eye to Stephen King's novel, and although far more a supernatural horror than the familial psychodrama King intended, the film stands alone as an absolute masterpiece (and ironically far more exciting and memorable than King's own mini-series adaption). Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrence, a writer who takes a care-taking post at The Overlook Hotel for the winter period; he is intent on using the time to get a new writing project underway. After moving in, it quickly becomes apparent there is something wrong with the hotel, and its effect on Jack is apparently to drive him insane and desperate to destroy his family. Shelley Duvall and young Danny Lloyd play wife and child with nowhere to go.
Kubrick is a filmmaker's filmmaker, and as is nearly always the case with his work, one of the biggest stars of "The Shining" is the man's technical brilliance and desire to push the envelope. From the famous, grand shots at the beginning (it has been difficult ever since to see epic aerial landscape photography without being reminded of the opening of this film), to some of the best steadicam work you will see, even when compared to the movies of today, it is a cinematic tour-de-force. Kubrick's attention to details whose job it is, if only on a subconscious level, to put you constantly on edge is rather impressive; before the production, he read Freud's essay "The Uncanny", about the feeling of something being uncomfortably strange whilst remaining familiar, and was intent on working that theme in at many a turn. What better film to work it into than one about the man who is supposed to love you wanting to murder you? Not a frame is wasted, and rarely is a moment not visually arresting, tense of unnerving, due to unique framing, lighting, or noticeably exciting camera language. The result is a movie with numerous iconic scenes and startling imagery. The soundtrack also might just be one of the most jarring and haunting in horror cinema; dense, loud, dissonant strings and found sounds shred regularly at your nerves. One of the film's best moments combines all the above, and may leave you with nightmares of little boys muttering "Redrum" at your bedside...as if kids doing strange things wasn't creepy enough!
This is a film you may find you do not love immediately; as always with Kubrick, there is a lot to take in, and the sense that he is making the film to be interesting rather than necessarily realistic is never far away. Detractors of the film cite the over-the-top nature of Nicholson's performance to be one of the issues they have with it, but I think Kubrick knew the absurdity of the character, the dark humour played against the isolated horror setting, would really accentuate the pressure, discomfort and sense of entrapment, with nobody else to turn to, Wendy and Danny are suffering. After a few viewings, "The Shining" should start to reveal itself to you as the masterpiece it is.
Far more Kubrick's than King's, and his only horror film, this still retains its status as one of the best-made of all time. He never did things by halves.