A masterpiece of terror/cinema art.

Rating: 10/10 (6 July 2016)

What makes The Shining so good? Is it the acting? The music? The cinematography? The lighting? The set? All of the above. Horror can be a tough genre to judge because does a horror film have to scare you to be successful? And how do you know if you were truly scared or not? If you jump during a scene, does that make the movie scary and therefore successful? Or is the movie scary and therefore successful because you are thinking about it later and feeling a sense of uneasiness? The Shining fits more with the latter category of horror films. It's not a movie that will likely cause you to jump out of your seat with fear. It might not even cause you to lose sleep or feel a sense of fear when thinking about it later. However, it does make one think. Things like when did Jack start to go mental, did Danny have any part in that, why didn't the chef want to talk about room 237, why did the hotel staff leave a family there over the winter knowing what could possibly happen, and did Jack really exist in that photo from the 1920s? These are all unsettling questions you'll be asking yourself after watching The Shining. One of the major aspects that creates the horrific feel of this movie is without a doubt the music. During the most intense scenes, the music only adds to the hysteria unfolding. When Danny sees the girls, when Jack gets angry with Wendy for the first time, when Jack and Danny are talking about the hotel in the room, when Wendy discovers what Jack has really been typing, when Jack is breaking down the door with an axe, and of course when he's chasing Danny through the maze. The music in these scenes, reminiscent of Psycho or Jaws, is almost a character itself. The actual characters themselves were played with such conviction that sometimes it didn't really feel like they were acting. Jack Nicholson didn't really do anything different from what he normally does. He's known for being an actor slightly unhinged. I mean he played The Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 movie Batman and was a patient at mental hospital in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was natural that he play an author losing his mind inside a haunted hotel. Shelley Duvall has a stressed out and abused look to her, as if she's constantly fretting about her husband's alcohol problem, money, and food. She's the battered housewife who is soft spoken, meek and she smokes. Danny Lloyd's face said it all. His reactions to the horrific scenes he witnessed were spectacular, and made you sense the fear he was feeling. The cinematography of this film is excellent as well. How the camera follows Danny on his tricycle as he goes through the vast hotel, following Jack through the wintery hedge mazeit was a masterful achievement.