A Truly Scary Movie

Rating: 9/10 (18 October 2006)

"The Shining," Stanley Kubrick's funhouse ride through hell, terrifies me. It scared me when I first saw it, what, 20 years ago, and it continues to scare me to this day.
Aside from borrowing a sketchy outline from the book's central premise, Kubrick's film does not much resemble Stephen King's novel. Kubrick vastly improves on the original story, and makes it far more horrifying -- and memorable -- than King did. King was not so much interested in the domestic drama elements of his story, and so the novel focuses overtly on the supernatural -- there's no doubt in the book that the demons plaguing Jack, and driving him to insanity, are quite real. Kubrick, on the other hand, creates a dysfunctional family horror film. Rather than explain away Jack's behavior as the work of a menacing dark spirit -- though Kubrick does allude ambiguously to that -- the film spends most of its time exploring the dynamics of this small nuclear family, one that is trying hard to ignore some ominous signs of serious domestic trouble. It's much scarier to think that a dad and husband might just go crazy from isolation, responsibility and a male inferiority complex than from demonic possession.
In Jack Nicholson, Kubrick found an actor who could both make you laugh and scare the pants off of you at the same time. He takes Jack so over the top that he sails right past hammy and circles back around to truly effective. Shelley Duvall is a wonderful actress when she can find a role to fit her unique physical characteristics, and she's perfect as Wendy, the suffering wife, who isn't quite as much of a doormat as you think she's going to be. And Scatman Crothers is great as well, as the head chef of the Overlook Hotel who knows a little something about its secrets.
Kubrick is an expert at knowing how to use images to frighten us. He creates isolated images in this film that I've never been able to forget: the twin girls hacked up to pieces in a hotel corridor; the vacant stare on Jack Nicholson's face as he slowly cracks up inside while his wife and son play in the snow outside; and creepiest of all, the sight of a man in a bear costume fellating a butler in one of the hotel's rooms, an image that has psychologically scarred me for life.
Add to all of this Kubrick's chilly, stately tracking shots that prowl through the hotel like something alive and that distorted, eerie musical score and you have one of the scariest movies ever made.
Grade: A