"Here's Johnny!"

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2005)

The Shining is definitely a Steven King story, definitely a Stanley Kubrick movie. Their marks are all over this 1980 thriller about claustrophobia inside a possessed hotel. Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, an author who gets the job of winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies where he'd be alone with his family and could write his latest book. The hotel hires caretakers for the winter to avoid ware-and-tear since the mountain blizzards often cuts the hotel off from the rest of civilization. Early in the movie we are told that a previous caretaker had gone insane and killed his family, and ominous sign to be sure. The mood of the film is established even before that scene however, as in true Kubrickian form, the opening of the movie has a certain feel to it that tells the viewer that something will not be right about the coming movie. The strange sound track, the long helicopter shot of a winding Colorado road sets the mood, an uneasy one. As the movie goes along, slow, quiet scenes predominate. Kubrick trusts his story enough to go minutes without any dialog, and the only words spoken have very little to do with the story, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jack's wife, Wendy, is played by Shelly Duvall who has the difficult job of acting surprised when her husband is taken over by the hotel. The more remarkable acting job was turned in by Danny Lloyd who plays Jack's son, Danny. Danny is the distant cousin of Cole in The Sixth Sense as Danny can see into paranormal worlds and has a creepy invisible friend "Tony." What make's Lloyd's acting even better is that he didn't know he was in a horror film, perhaps lending a certain understated value to his character. The sprawling hotel becomes a character in the movie, in more ways than one, and we become claustrophobic with the characters as the movie reaches its climax. The final third of the movie is where the action happens, where the thrills reside. Most fans of the King book find the movie slow and plodding as Kubrick builds up to the final parts of the film. From the point where Scatman Crothers returns to the hotel in one of the funniest rescue missions you'll see in films to the end, there are genuine thrills and chills. The film will be remembered most for Nicholson's slide into madness (a role custom made for the actor), but it should be remembered as a well crafted, big buildup/big reward thriller.