The list of movies that I won't pop in the DVD player while trying to get to sleep is a very short one. There's
Blood on Satan's Claw, a criminally underrated British opus about a village that falls prey to a demonic pile of bones. There's
Kill Baby Kill, Mario Bava's pre J-horror ghost story where an eerie little girl stares people to death. Believe me, it's way more creepy than it sounds. And then there is
The Shining, Stanley Kubrick's mammoth-sized tripfest from 1980 that still has more sheer willy-inducing power than pretty much any other movie I've seen.
First, a bit of background information. I saw
The Shining before I read the novel. Every other review out there blathers on about the differences between the book and this movie, so allow me to throw my two cents into this very redundant piggy bank and add that, yeah, the two are vastly different. The book is much more character-driven, for the most part, with far more sympathy being lended to the Jack Torrance character while also focusing on what Stephen King himself dubs the "sheer inhuman evil" of the hotel that these characters find themselves trapped by. For my money, Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson took the framework of the story and used creative license to make it as flat-out
weird and
disturbing as they could possibly muster, and the result is something almost completely unlike anything you've seen in the genre. In a good way, I promise. Yeah, it's hard to connect with the characters. Yeah, we don't get that maudelin little bit of redemption for Torrance at the end. But, at the end of the day, what is more memorable - haunted holes in the ground or freaky-deaky transforming nude women? I rest my case. Besides, the officially-sanctioned Stephen King-endorsed film version is the 1997 TV movie, proving yet again that "closer to the book" does not necessarily always equal "better."
But enough about that. My goal with this review isn't to delve into all of the usual English major trappings or the drama and personal strife that this production went through. There are literally THOUSANDS of reviews and dissertations about
The Shining on the great, grand ol' interwebz that do that very thing much better than this guy could, and if you want the Cliff's notes version, even the Wikipedia page does a pretty damn admirable job expounding on all of the hidden meanings and ambiguities as well as all the ways that Kubrick was a prick on the set. No, sir, what I'm going to attempt to do is give people who HAVEN'T seen this movie some semblance of just what it's like to watch it. Hopefully I'll be successful enough to persuade a few of those unfortunate souls to invest twenty bucks in a Blu-Ray copy, because let me tell you something (brother), this is one gorgeous-looking movie that REALLY pops in HD. During the daylight hours, of course.
Don't believe me? Here's the movie's original
theatrical trailer.
To this day, that has to be the most effective, creepy trailer of all time. A truly classic example of "less is more" played out to perfection.
Meet Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson circa 1980 during his "I'm the biggest superstar in the world" period. Like many Stephen King protagonists, Torrance is a full-time English teacher and part-time writer interviewing for the caretaker's job at the Overlook Hotel. The hotel itself is one of the main characters of
The Shining, a huge, sprawling and infinitely luxurious hilltop resort that closes every winter due to the cost associated with keeping the surrounding roads cleared of snow. The caretaker's job is to make the winter less of a financial money pit, although hotel manager Stuart Ulman (Barry Nelson) makes it a point to reiterate the dangers of cabin fever while also giving the grisly details of the hotel's past involving one of the previous caretakers killing his entire family during one of those long winters cooped up together.
Throughout this opening expository scene, Torrance says all the right things and seems appropriately jazzed about the prospect of gaining this high-paying job and spending the winter in this veritable mansion with his wife and son, but while he is smiling externally, something about him just seems...off. It goes without saying that Nicholson is a truly awesome actor, and you would be hard-pressed to find people to dispute that, but this might very well be the best acting performance of his career. 141 minutes later, you won't be able to get him out of your head, for better or worse.
From here, we are introduced to Jack's family where we get more back story. His son Danny (Danny Lloyd) has an episode involving a strange hallucination. It should also be mentioned that he talks to his finger and returns fire in a low, croaky voice. As it turns out, said finger is actually the speaking mechanism of "the little boy who lives in his mouth" named Tony, an imaginary friend who serves as Danny's only real social outlet. We learn this from Wendy (Shelley Duvall), Jack's wife and Danny's mother, who informs us while talking to a child psychologist. When the psychologist asks about Danny's medical history, Wendy is forced to tell her that Jack once accidentally broke his arm while drunk but that he has been "sober for six months." Foreshadowing.
Since the movie could not launch forward if it didn't happen, Jack gets the job. A long sequence consisting of the hotel's closing day commences where Kubrick's camera work really begins to make its presence known. More than any story differences, this stuff - the technical aspects, the sheer
creepiness that Stanley Kubrick lends to the Overlook Hotel - is where it shines head and shoulders above Mick Garris' 1997 TV movie. You know, they tried. I can't say that Garris and King himself (who wrote the screenplay for that particular adaptation) DIDN'T give it their damndest to bring the absolute best literary version of
The Shining to the masses, but there was just no way that they could match the atmosphere that an artist like Kubrick was able to lend to this material.
The evidence? The creepy twins. Danny sneaks off into the hotel's game room and sees these two little demons in blue. They do nothing in the scene other than slowly turn around and walk away, all while Wendy Carlos' soul-destroying score sends an ice pick into your soul, but their mere presence has this uncanny ability to unnerve. We get a bit more unraveling here, as Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the chief cook of the hotel, has a long conversation with Danny where we learn that the young boy has the ability to "shine" - Hallorann's word to describe telepathic ability to not only communicate but to see both past and future events. Combined with just how synthy and abrasive the music in this movie is, we can deduce that this does not bode well for this family's future in the long winter to come.
Flash forward a month, and the real "meat" portion of the movie begins. Jack is using his newfound free time to begin a writing project that seems to be going nowhere. We are shown a series of events in quick succession indicating the day-to-day life that this nuclear family enacts inside the hotel, as Wendy and Danny navigate the outdoor hedge maze, Jack types away (getting more and more frustrated as he does so), and Danny rides his big wheel around the huge expanse of wood and carpeted floors. The tension builds masterfully in this section of the movie, as Jack snaps at Wendy after being interrupted from his writing while Danny has a terrifying hallucination where the creepy twins (which the audience can infer are the two daughters of Charles Grady, the caretaker in the AFOREMENTIONED slicing-and-dicing incident) invite him to play with them forever. And ever. And ever.
The snow piles up outside the hotel, and the event that really kicks this movie's horror aspect into overdrive is the incicdent in Room 237. During Danny's conversation with Hallorann earlier in the movie, the young boy asked his older friend what happened in Room 237. Hallorann's response? "Nothing. There ain't nothing in Room 237. So stay out, you hear me? STAY OUT!!" You know how the psychology of young children works. We are told that something is forbidden and thus become more and more curious about just WHAT lurks behind the secret door, so it isn't long until Danny finds himself inside that room after the hotel seems to virtually invite him inside. He shows up a short time later in the lobby that Jack has converted into his study, sucking his thumb and bruises around his neck, which Wendy immediately interprets as child abuse from Jack to Danny.
This sets Jack off, who heads to the ballroom and acts out one of the many classic sequences in this movie. A bartender, who either may or may not be in Jack's imagination, serves him drink after drink while we are clued in as to the deeper issues in the Jack-Wendy marriage. His buried resentment of her, about how she "will never let me forget what happened" comes through in shining (pun intended) colors, the desperation and venom in Nicholson's voice getting more and more pronounced with each mythical alcoholic beverage. Just like that, the scene ends, as Wendy shows up to inform her husband that Danny has come out of his zombie state and said that a woman in Room 237 tried to strangle him.
Now comes the scene that REALLY did a number on me during my childhood, and it still leaves me mighty unsettled today. Jack heads to the room to investigate, and with the low, sinister rumbling of a heartbeat reverberating underneath the music, he enters the bathroom. The shower curtain is slowly pulled back, revealing a beautiful woman soaking in the water. She stands up and walks to Jack, who looks mightily intrigued at this prospect. He begins to kiss her, and the camera closes in close to their faces. We, the audience, can tell that something is now subtly different, but it isn't until Kubrick cuts back to the full shot that all is revealed. The beautiful woman has been replaced by a disgusting, crusty hag who begins laughing maniacally, the music roaring to a crescendo, the shot juxtaposing between the laughing woman and her prone body in the bathtub as Jack runs away. Good God.
The novel does more to clue us in as to just who the hell this person was whose sole mission in the afterlife is to murder little kids and creep the holy hell out of middle-aged men. If I remember correctly, she was a hotel guest who spent a week at the Overlook years before the Torrance family's arrival. After a week-long orgy of booze and sex, she took one sleeping pill more than the recommended amount and accidentally drowned in the tub, maintaining this post as her vengeful command center in the afterlife. That's all well and good, but I prefer the way this aspect of the story plays out in the movie. It's always creepier when it's unexplained. Add that to "less is more" in the Lick Ness Monster guide to kicking ass at work and play.
Jack heads back to his family's quarters, lying to Wendy that he saw nothing inside the room. Meanwhile, Danny has completely shut down, and the concerned mother wants to cut their arrangement at the hotel short to get Danny some medical help. Jack scoffs at the idea, rapidly becoming more and more unhinged with each passing moment before storming out of the room for Parts Unknown.
The movie then gives us the immortal sequence inside the ballroom, now curiously loud and crawling with maybe-and-maybe-not partygoers. Jack begins downing some more bourbon before one of the party's butlers collides into him and inadvertently spills the alcohol. Soon enough, Jack learns that the butler's name is Charles Grady, and he recognizes both the name and the face of the man who "hacked his family to death." The conversation is the very definition of a slow burn, with Grady (masterfully played by Philip Stone) bouncing off these accusations before giving in to the dark side, playing the role of temptation on Jack as he convinces him that his wife and son need to be "corrected." It seems that the hotel has a vested interest in seeing that Jack Torrance fulfills his destiny - that destiny being joining the large pantheon of lost souls confined within the walls within to murder the holy hell out of any surrounding loved ones. It may not be said in so many words, but it's implied, believe me.
The following morning, Wendy gathers up her courage to confront Jack in his study. Bat in hand, she makes her way to the typewriter that he has repeatedly hacked away at throughout the duration of the movie. Much to her shock, the manuscript stacked next to the typewriter consists of page after page of one phrase formatted differently. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," indeed. Turns out that insanity and art ARE very closely linked. Jack surprises her from behind and cuts loose on Wendy in perhaps the best-acted scene of Jack Nicholson's career. When most people yell, it comes across as overacting. Here, it just feels absolutely appropriate, the craziness, violence and desperation radiating off the screen with savage intensity. As he goes in for the kill, Wendy manages to smash him in the head with the bat and send him tumbling down a long flight of stairs, knocking him out.
He wakes up in the hotel's walk-in pantry, locked inside by Wendy. She plans to make a break for civilization using the hotel's snowcat; earlier in the film, Jack sabotaged both the snowcat and the hotel's radio, cutting off the residents from the outside world completely. Jack is later admonished by the voice of Grady who admonishes him for not being able to get the job done, playing on Jack's insecurity as he taunts the surrogate murderer. In a deadly serious tone, Jack says that he is capable of finishing his task. Moments later, we hear the audible "click" as Grady unlocks the door.
The finishing sequence of
The Shining is classic in every way. It is suspenseful, violent and even mystifying in all the right places, so play like Samuel L. Jackson and hold on to your butts.
Danny writes "REDRUM" in red lipstick on the bathroom door, waking Wendy up by repeating the word over and over in his "Tony" voice (Danny no longer exists; Tony has taken over). "REDRUM" is, of course, "MURDER" spelled backwards, a fact that any fan of TNA wrestling and "RELLIK" likely would be able to decipher. Immediately after this revelation, the now axe-wielding Jack begins knocking his way into the family quarters. Acting instinctively, Wendy cordons herself off in the bathroom, shoving Danny out the window who promptly makes his way back inside the main lobby of the hotel. Meanwhile, Jack attempts to make his way into the bathroom where we get THIS immortal visage that everyone should be familiar with if you have ever strode down the horror aisle at the video store.
Before I finish this baby off, I have to make a few comments about Shelley Duvall's performance in this movie. A majority of the reviews aren't very kind to Ms. Duvall, calling her "Olive Oyl"-lite, unconvincing, weak and so on and so forth. I respectfully disagree with this assessment. No doubt due to the constant pushing from her director, Duvall - with her shrill line delivery, bloodcurdling screams and incredibly pained facial expressions - comes across as absolutely terrified, desperate, the claustrophobia and panic of the situation clearly overwhelming her. Through all of it, she bends but does not break. Everyone's milage might vary, but I find myself firmly in the corner of Wendy Torrance in these final segments of the film, Olive Oyl be damned.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming. Before Jack can finish Wendy off, he hears the front door of the hotel opening and shuffles off to investigate. Throughout much of the film's third act, the action periodically shifted to Florida as Mr. Hallorann enjoys his off-season vacation. As all of the creepiness at the OVerlook picks up, Hallorann seems to be seeing the events play out in his own mind and does his damndest to check up on the Torrance family. This, of course, is made impossible by the fact that the battery for the hotel's radio has been...misplaced. Wouldn't you know it, he has shown up at the front door after navigating the winding road leading up to the Overlook. The camera follows him in a long, almost unbearably tense steadicam shot before Jack emerges from behind a pillar, killing him with an axe shot to the chest and flushing Danny (who saw the whole thing in his mind) out of his hiding place.
What follows is a sort of chase on two very different fronts. Physically, Jack pursues Danny outside through the hedge maze, yelling threats at his son as he follows the footprints, inching closer and closer to completing his mission. Metaphysically, Wendy searches for Danny inside the hotel and encounters all of the hotel's ghosts in the various locales, including a first-hand look at a furry homosexual incident from the past. When popping in a copy of a film based on a Stephen King novel, a man dressed in a lion suit fellating a hotel guest is the last thing that you expect to see, but there it is. It would be chuckle-inducing in any other movie besides this one.
Eventually, Danny is able to outsmart Jack, stepping backwards into his own footprints and covering them with snow before backtracking through the maze. He navigates his way back to the entrance as Wendy exits the hotel. The two of them quickly enter Hallorann's abandoned snowcat and begin driving away toward safety, leaving Jack - unable to find his way out of the hedge maze - to freeze to death, caterwauling "WENDY" at the top of his lungs all the while before collapsing into a heap. The action immediately flashes forward to the dead body of Jack Torrance, snow and ice clung to his face before we get our final bit of ambiguity. The camera switches back inside to the photo gallery on the Overlook walls, slowly zooming in to a group photo from July 4th, 1921, with Jack Torrance first and foremost among the large crowd celebrating the holiday.
Roll end credits.
If you have not seen this movie, reading the above recap should make it pretty clear whether or not
The Shining is for you. The best way that I know how to put it is that this is not a fun, happy horror movie. It's not the classic '80s
Friday the 13th films, with their comforting cliches, goofy characters and cool kills. It's not
Halloween with its badass villain and catchy score. Nope, what Stanley Kubrick set about to do with this VERY loose adaptation of a 1978 novel by Stephen King was to creep the holy fuck out of any unfortunate soul who found themselves subjected to it, and in that regard, he succeeded in spades.
From a technical standpoint, this is some movie, and still looks fantastic more than 30 years after its original release date (which, amazingly enough, was the same day as the first
Friday the 13th film). But by my estimation, it's the human touches and the atmosphere that make this movie immortal.
First, the human aspect. Nicholson's performance stands as perhaps the greatest sustained acting job in any horror movie. Yes, Anthony Hopkins was quite great in
The Silence of the Lambs, but he was only onscreen for something like 14 minutes. Nicholson outdoes that in the ballroom and "I'm gonna bash your brains in!!" lobby scenes alone. I can't really say that the guy is an out-and-out villain, because like the book, we are clued in that the hotel is manipulating him in some way. When the end comes, however, we're scared of this guy, his buried rage now completely on the surface and ready to strike. Duvall isn't that far behind, making an ideal horror heroine who almost quite literally goes to hell and back, emerging victorious after the horror that befalls her family.
Now for the atmosphere. With a combination of steadicam shots, music and color scheme, Kubrick creates what is one of the two most oppressively suspenseful locales of any horror movie (the other being Dario Argento's
Suspiria). The hotel itself becomes a character in
The Shining, the labyrinthine maze of corridors that Danny rides through before meeting the Grady twins, the pantry, the lobby and the ballroom becoming quirks on this very ominous figure lording over the other characters. Put more simply, there is a tangible presence of danger on the screen in this movie, that there are things in this hotel with the power and will to hurt people. By proxy, this power can influence human beings to stop restraining their own urge to do the same thing. That, I think, is what scares people about
The Shining - that there are people with a small amount of evil buried deeply within, and with enough prodding that evil can be unleashed. That and murderous ghosts of elderly women. Those are pretty creepy too.
**** out of ****. In the realm of ghost story flicks, this is the Flair-Steamboat.
