Classic Horror Movie which plays on your mind

Rating: 9/10 (29 May 2010)

What is it that makes a good horror movie? To some, it consists of lots of blood, to others it might be about spending lonely nights in haunted houses full of cheap thrills.However, I belong to the category who finds horror most scary, when it is believable, when the incidents there could happen to me and you, when the supernatural occurrences seem ambiguous,for only then are they truly believable.Are there really ghosts, or is someone just imagining it?.For such people,horror is in the mind,and psychological horror movies are the most scary type of horror.
The Shining is a shining example(pardon the pun) of such a movie.The plot is fairly straightforward:We have a palatial hotel situated amidst the high,lonely slopes of the Rocky Mountains.This place is inaccessible throughout the winter months,and thus needs a caretaker.Enter Jack Nicholson,his mousy wife Shelley Duvall ,and their son who supposedly has an ability to shine, or communicate with people mentally.
Where it differs from more conventional horror movies is the fact that the gore/ghosts do not start as soon as they enter the hotel.Instead,this movie is more of a psychological horror movie, in the beginning , everything seems hunky-dory with the family,and the stay together slowly causes underlying problems to come to the fore: Jack's indifference to his family is something else,Shelley's mistrust of her husband has never really gone.A chilling scene worth recalling is the one where Jack comforts his son that he could never hurt him, while actually the complete lack of emotion in that scene if frightening And Jack's slow descent into madness, prompted by hallucinations/ghosts and his wife's mistrust is predictable but horrifying.
The director gains marks here for his brilliant cinematography, the sense of isolation of the Rocky mountains is shown brilliantly in the aerial shots of the long ,winding roads there.The huge,empty hotel with its past grandeur adds to this.Particularly brilliant are the shots of the son racing down the corridors on his tricycle, the feeling of actually being there and not knowing what is around the corner is awesome!Add to this the excellent soundtrack, which adds to the underlying sense of foreboding throughout the movie, and the documentary feel of it, the chilling, straightforward way in which the shots are taken,and you have one of the best horror movies of all time