Terrifying...

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2007)

The Torrance family head to the vast Overlook Hotel, of which they will be the only occupants for the next months. Great for Mrs. Torrance (Duvall) who enjoys the outdoors and a house-keeping challenge. But not so good for sensitive Danny, who feels the influence of the horrors committed by the last caretaker. And definitively not good for Jack Torrance (Nicholson), whose planned seclusion to write his novel leads not to artistic inspiration but to murderous madness.
In adapting Stephen King's book, Kubrick turned it and the horror genre on their heads. All the common principles of horror are twisted: things happen in the stark, white daylight rather than at dark, silence induces the terror rather than spooky sounds, and the undead are far less dangerous than members of one's own family. Rejecting the ghosts-as-frighteners theory since to him life after death was a positive prospect, Kubrick tore the film down to Jack Nicholson's slow, frightful mental unraveling. It works wonders (in the most horrible of ways imaginable): Jack Nicholson directed by Kubrick is far more terrifying than any monster could hope to be.
Kubrick being Kubrick, nothing is left to chance: every frame is completely calculated. This has earned him a reputation for being cold in some quarters. One can easily imagine what effect this gives a film such as "The Shinning". Sweeping shots of eerie corridors (the birth of the steady-cam), slow zooms into Nicholson's crazed face, the labyrinth scene... Kubrick weaves a tapestry of cinematic tension and unease and psychological violence with every element at his disposal. Stephen King hated it of course, convinced that the "scary" ghosts from his source novel were what made the horror work, and remade it his way two decades later. the result was a sorry dud of a film.
"The Shinning" is among the best horror films ever because at its heart it holds that sordid truth that the most frightening thing out there is ourselves.