The Shining (1980)

“Here’s Johnny!” One of the most memorable moments of Stanley Kubrick’s psychological horror masterpiece is surprisingly not the outright scariest. And that can be said of the film as a whole. While it is certainly an excellent film and is regularly thought of as one of the best horror films ever it’s not that scary.

But that is not a bad thing. I cannot emphasize that enough. It has very few moments that make you really jump. But for the entire length of the film there is a subtle, but very heavy, layer of dread and menace lying in the background that gradually builds up and up as the mental state of the characters deteriorate and the events around them become ever stranger, their relationships fraying, the once peaceful setting becoming a place of nightmares. Then it all gets released. The approach to horror that is focused on subtlety, pacing and atmosphere is, in my opinion, much better than the gore and jump scares typically favoured nowadays.

The film follows Jack Torrence (played to perfection by Jack Nicholson), a struggling writer who accepts a job as the winter caretaker at the mountaintop Overlook hotel despite the fact that a past caretaker murdered his family there. After Jack, his wife and his son arrive they find that not everything is as it seems. Danny (Jack’s son) begins to see ghostly apparitions relating to the hotels dark past. This is because he can ‘shine’ (he basically as a sixth sense). As the winter sets in Jack’s grip on reality rapidly worsens and he too starts seeing things. This all leaves plenty of questions. Are Jack’s visions just hallucinations or are the damned spirits of the hotel tormenting him? Why does the hotel want to hurt them? Is it supernatural at all, or just madness?

That ambiguity is another of the film’s greatest strengths. Kubrick deliberately made the film mysterious and did not resolve those questions so that we would still have things to ponder after the film. It also reflects the strangeness of the situation. Compared to the original Stephen King novel, it is much less clear cut. And I must say; I prefer that. The unclear questions it poses about humanity, the nature of evil and the presence of the supernatural are more entertaining than the film bluntly yelling at me: evil spirits, possession, horror! It is doubtless that Kubrick is a master of visual storytelling.

The direction of each shot is masterful as well as the plotting. Every scene is framed just right to capture the atmosphere it should have, whether it is one with a subtle sheet of fear underneath or one of outright horror. The sound and score are fantastic too. Even the opening shot- just an aerial view of a car driving along a mountain road- is given an air of menace by the powerful score. These all combine to create some of the tensest scenes ever in film. Even the editing can be terrifying. I have never been so scared by a cut to the word “Tuesday” before or since.

So like I said earlier: a masterpiece of slow, tense and atmospheric horror. A film of excellent story and themes; acting and character; and sound and editing. I am no horror fan but this film is, regardless of genre, excellent.