The Shining

Stanley Kubrick, USA/UK 1980, 146 minutes

From the eerie opening helicopter shot of a lone car snaking its way along a mountain road (a shot critic Pauline Kael described as "like a caterpillar seen by God"), accompanied by squealing, whining strings and ominous chanting, Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel is unrelenting in its grip on your nerve-endings.

Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance - a man who takes on the job of caretaker of a large Colorado hotel while it is closed during the winter months, moving in with his family so he can get some writing done in peace. Upon taking the job, he is informed by the manager that the previous caretaker went crazy and murdered his entire family before taking his own life. Jack just smiles his best Jack smile (looking for all the world like he went crazy years ago) and says he isn't in the least bothered. It was probably the look on Jack's face in one later shot that made George Miller cast him as Satan incarnate in The Witches Of Eastwick.

The family consists of wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd), a creepy-looking kid with a psychic gift (called `Shining') which starts blaring warning signals at him the second he hears about the hotel (truly shocking, blood-soaked visions flash into his head). Needless to say, things don't work out too well.

Kubrick's chilling direction is what makes the film so unsettling. The hotel sets are huge, echoing halls and long, featureless hallways through which his camera swoops and glides like a spectre. The loss of all sense of time is accentuated by the chapter headings that boom onto the black screen from time to time, reading: `Thursday' (BOOM!) or `3 O'Clock' (BOOM!) or `Tuesday' (BOOM!). There are images in this film that will stay with you forever, in a bad way.

"A powerful exercise in horror... wholeheartedly recommended" - Virgin

Review by Ben Stephens
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97

With The Shining, Kubrick and Jack Nicholson combined to produce a film of restrained power. Jack Torrance (Nicholson) goes with his family to be the caretaker of a hotel in the middle of nowhere for five months over winter on their own, completely cut off. The hotel was unfortunately built on an Indian burial ground and suffers from a rather bloody history (cannibalism, axe murders) and this seems to send Torrance loopy. It doesn't really help either that his son's psychic (and so's the cook) and his wife's a neurotic wreck.

The film's power derives from the typically Kubrickian direction; many of his familiar traits are present: constant tracking shots, a strong musical score (it always pleases me to hear a horror movie score which doesn't rely too much on ripping off Psycho), deceptive mirror shots, and some fantastic striking images. The film looks incredibly slick and smooth, via the use of the recently pioneered Steadicam, smooth dissolves linking scenes, the immaculate rooms and corridors of the hotel and the perfect symmetrical framing of the shots. This gives the film a feeling of calm and normality, thus the horror of the nightmare images and the 'possession' seem even more surprising and hence shockingm and the terrifying power of the film is made even greater in a far more subtle and less heavy handed way than you might expect from a Stephen King adaptation. Also unforgettable is Jack Nicholson's astounding performance, a draining and disturbing personification of madness which never falters or fails to scare.

Although the ending verges on the predictable, the film remains very impressive and entertaining on an intelligent level as we the audience are left to piece several things together for ourselves after the rather anticlimatic denoument. Nicholson's classic performance and Kubrick's visuals give the film its strength and power, albeit a gradual and sustained power far removed from the conventional slash-and-shock horror movie.

Review by Mark Radice
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94