Welcome to "The Shining"'s Overlook Hotel ... such a scary place ... such a scary face ...

Rating: 9/10 (29 May 2011)

Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is a movie that impresses by its extraordinary ability to scare the hell out of you. You may say that this is the basic premise of a horror film, but believe me, it's not that obvious. When you expect to be scared, you kind of mentally prepare yourself to be shocked at any moment to minimize the impact. In the case of "The Shining", a movie I've seen multiples times, no matter how long I keep my guard up, the movie gets me every time. And this is all to the credit of Kubrick's perfectionist direction, a gift that includes a very accurate casting instinct : four important characters in the film, all of them perfect.
"The Shining" is adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same title, and you can tell that the author has a strange fascination for claustrophobic places, as it seems to provide resourceful elements to thrill you and keep your heart literally hooked, always expecting the worse to invite itself. And that's understandable in a very basic level, if you find yourself in a closed place, you can't escape, this is the basis of "Alien", "Das Boot" and many other thrilling masterpieces. But in "The Shining", although the hostility of the environment is very well suggested by the shots of the long and tortuous road leading to the Hotel, and the cold winter that blocks the way, the horrifying element of the location is still kind of diluted in its vastness. The Overlook Hotel is so big that the places where to hide are countless. So, the plot needs an extra push to increase the Hotel's level of scariness, and though I concede the script is not the movie's strongest asset, it gets us prepared in a relatively good way, giving away the "terrible secret". The former family who kept the Hotel during the summer was brutally killed by the father before he shot himself to death. This doesn't seem to distract Jack Torrance, the new inhabitant, played by Jack Nicholson, on the contrary, he finds the anecdote quite amusing.
The film doesn't embarrass itself with subtleties. From the start, we kind of expect that Torrance will be victim of the same Syndrome that lead to this bloody murder, his eyes are already telling something, as if Jack Torrance's personality had a parallel predisposition to be victim of the disturbing atmosphere governing the Hotel, and Nicholson's unique talent to embody evilness with one grin and one hell of a hypnotic stare. Torrance's eeriness contrasts with the sweet motherly naivety of Wendy, Shelley Duvall in a performance I consider among the best female leads in a horror film, and the innocence of their little boy, Danny played by the namesake actor, Danny Lloyd. The last thing we precisely learn in the first act, is about Danny's strange ability to telepathically communicate. He's got the shining, a supernatural power he shares with Holloway, played by the late Scatman Crothers. We understand that this shining will play a significant role to the plot, while surprisingly pleased by the return of the unforgettable orderly Turtle from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" who doesn't open the window this time, but close the last door letting the Torrance family on its own. Now, we have all the parameters, the movie can start.
And the least we can say is that we're quickly plunged in one of the creepiest and most uncomfortable atmospheres from a movie, beautifully embodied by Kubrick's direction. The cinematography is efficient, powerful, and not restrained. "The Shining" looks, sounds and plays like a horror film, Kubrick doesn't transcend but he doesn't cheat either. Take the subliminal appearances of the twin girls, reminiscent of the same hallucinatory images from "The Exorcist", the iconic torrential waves of blood splashing, the long bicycle ride along a never ending floor, not to mention the famous scene where Wendy finally discovers what Jack was writing all this time, and I can go on, and on, Kubrick's touch is omnipresent in the film, and his nomination to a Razzie is a joke. There's a perfectionist feeling that makes the aesthetic of the hotel, scary in every single surface of it. The bar, the bathroom, the room, everything exudes a kind of hostility, that you wonder how you can spend months and months without getting alienated by such a place, as it happened for Jack.
But I don't think "The Shining" is nuanced enough to invite for an analysis about Jack Torrance's evolution. One could go on about dehumanization, being trapped in a place and letting your evil side influence you, I think the movie just delivers the premise of a great horror film and it works thanks to the characterization of the good guys. Danny is sweet and Wendy so genuine, so loving and caring for Jack, we can't not to root for them, and wish for them to leave this nightmare. Because this is a nightmare, when someone you love is eager to kill you and it's almost impossible to kill, even to hurt him because of self-preservation, while survival instinct commands you to escape but you can't. "The Shining" is as nightmarishly captivating as Jack is perfect, his face when he opens the door with the ax, is not the scariest moment but surely the most iconic, although for me, fear and panic have never been more perfectly incarnated than by Shelley Duvall's disfigured face while screaming and begging. This was realistic in its touching ugliness and the best pay-off of Kubrick's infamous perfectionism.
And the climax is probably the best you can expect from the genre, so full of thrills, and some "what-the-hell" moments forever graved in my memory  "The Shining"'s flaws are simply irrelevant because you know you just watched a great horror film, when your sensation at the end is relief ... like when waking up from a nightmare