The Shining is More Than a Horror Movie

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2016)

Anyone can make a horror movie. Throw in some blood, gore, a chainsaw, and mask suddenly the most basic movie script turns into a box-office hit. No author understood this concept as thoroughly as Stephen King. By unintentionally monopolizing the genre, he created an era of cheap thrills and paper-mache horror. With titles like Pet Semetary and Cujo the Demon Dog to his name, it's no wonder that people scoffed at The Shining when it was first released. A man is trapped inside all winter and he goes nuts from cabin fever. So what?
Where others saw cliché horror, Stanley Kubrick saw potential. He manipulated the plot so that the main character's insanity, driven by isolation and supernatural forces, became intrinsically lined with marital abuse, unrequited love, and premature domesticity. By radically deviating from the original story line, Kubrick has transformed The Shining into something much more than a horror movie. It is now a study of of humanity, dehumanized and defeated, starved and beaten, tempted and tortured, by forces within and beyond.