Heeeere's Johnny!

Rating: 9/10 (30 April 2016)

This atmospheric thriller is sure to creep you out with its pacing, eery editing and cinematography (those tracking shots are highly effective), and Jack Nicholson's powerful performance as Jack Torrance. Horror films often tend to divide audiences into genre fans who follow the gore and those who laugh in the face of so-called scares, insisting their own resiliancy to cheap thrills and lamebrain plotting.
As a movie, The Shining is thoroughly watchable from start to finish. Jack Nicholson steals the show as the ex-alcoholic, ex-teacher who is looking for solitude for a 'writing project', and the Overlook Hotel appears to be just what he is looking for as he pitches in as caretaker during the snowbound winter months. Joining him at the Overlook are his wife Wendy (Duvall) and his talented son Danny (Lloyd), whose special ability to 'shine' causes him to fear (and rightly so) the dark secrets of the hotels past.
Is Torrance simply going mad, or being influenced? What's driving him? Is it the ghosts of past events, or his own consciousness filling the void of isolation, or a bit of both? Despite the supernatural visitations you never quite know, and this is what makes this film so chilling and unbelievably bleak - Jack could simply be a victim of his own insane consciousness. Without ever resorting to extreme gore or shocks, Kubrick creates a vision of hell, a vision of the void that will sear itself onto your mind.
Overall rating: 9 out of 10.