You have always BEEN here....

Rating: 9/10 (1 September 2001)

Mild SPOILERS
In the same way Kubrick's comedy Dr Strangelove wasn't necessarily funny, so The Shining isn't necessarily scary. By that I mean, it's not a film that you appear to be scared whilst watching it, but it is scary in the way it lingers long after, deep in the subconscious. Images, dialog, The Shining is pure psychological terror, and it is that psychological terror that makes the film what it is.
Kubrick has to go down in history as a true cinematic force, everything used in The Shining makes it all the more offsetting, the long tracking shots, the predominantly red colour scheme, the slightly black comedy performances. It all remains in the memory, the powerful and disturbing images that most people don't even pick up on, for instance, take a look at the picture in the closing shot, and no I'm not talking about Nicholson, look at some of the other faces. Subtle eh, that's Kubrick for you.
There are also some unbelievably perverse images in the film, if it wasn't for the fact that most people miss them I'm sure the film would have been more controversial, check out the scene where the man in the dog mask is giving "oral pleasure" to another man, it's pretty messed up, but theses are the images that I'm talking about, they get under you're skin. The photography by John Allcott and stediecam operator Garret Brown should also be commended, the use of symmetrical framing and over lighting make scenes seem real, yet at the same time completely removed from reality, if that makes any sense at all, like in the scenes where the man with the hole in his head toasts Shelly Duvall's character in the corridor.
This brings me on to the acting, like I pointed out, there played with an almost comedic feeling, but this only helps to make light of the bizarre extremes the Overlook hotel is creating. Nicholson has been much better in films like The Last Detail, One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest and Chinatown, but his fame will always lie with his bravo `Heeeere's Johnny'. Shelly Duvall was also a lot better in Altman's Three Women; here she seems a little uncomfortable with the material (and anyone who's seen The making of The Shining will know she had a serious case of the flu). But Danny Lloyd impresses with his first film and Scatman Crothers helps gives his slightly under written role a real human side.
My favourite scene in the film is with Jack in the bathroom with Phillip Stone's eerie Delbert Grady (`I Corrected them')... Brilliantly written and shot in order to build the feeling of isolation that Jack is going through. Let's not forget that that is what the Shining is about - isolation, a man struggling with his inner demons. So if you're a Kubrick fan and you haven't yet seen this film then act now, it's one of the best psychological movies ever made, and I took the liberty not to call it a "horror" film.
9/10