The Shining (1980) Review

Montage, associations, wide angle lenses, zooming out, perfect lighting, powerful images, hypnotic and striking sound, dynamic acting, numerous takes, and a so-called egotistical and maniacal director. What do all these things have in common? Stanley Kubrick. And so it goes with "The Shining," a film adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name. In order to get his cast ready for the film, Kubrick had them watch Roman Polanski’s "Rosemary’s Baby," "The Exorcist," and "Eraserhead." It is in the fine tradition that those horror movies set forth, that The Shining really expounds upon.

The beginning shot is of a car winding along mountains as Jack Torrence (played by Jack Nicholson) makes his way to a job interview at The Overlook Hotel. What would otherwise be an innocuous scene, is heightened by the Wendy Carlos score (an adaptation of Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique") that chills to the bone as we follow this car to its destination of isolation. We watch this minuscule car from above, in an epic sequence as the credits roll down the screen and one gets a deep sense of dark foreboding. Cut to a shot of Jack’s wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) who are in the kitchen of their home in Colorado. They are waiting for Jack to return from his interviewer for the caretaker position at the hotel. Danny, has a gift, called the shining, where he can connect with people and events in the present, past, or future. He can see things that might happen, or didn’t, and his visions about the hotel are particularly terrifying.
As Jack is told in his interview, the job is one of isolation. It involves staying at the hotel over the winter and making sure all the rooms are heated and not damage is done. The last caretaker, a man who’s family you might get a chance to meet through the course of the film, got cabin fever. He murdered his two daughters in a hallway and mutilated their corpses and then killed his wife in a bathtub.


As Danny is told by Dick Hallorann, (Scatman Crothers), who also has the gift of the shining, “Some places are like people: some shine and some don't.” This hotel does, and Danny is told to never go into room 237 by Hallorann. But he does.

Masterful work of Steadicam inventor Garret Brown is exceptional. The tracking shots of Danny down the hallways in his tricycle are particularly intense, especially when we go through long hallways and winding lavish rooms. The camera gives us a sense of foreboding, as we instinctively look around every corner to see if someone/something is there waiting. And there are.
The lighting is exceptional in the film, and one of Kubrick’s trademarks is the zoom-out. He used this technique masterfully in the opening credits of A Clockwork Orange. He usually has a couple of sequences where he begins the shot with a close-up of the characters face, and then zooms out and we are given a context of the situation. It is very intense and definitely captivated my attention.

Overall, Kubrick is an exceptional director. Many critics have given his films poor ratings, only to change their “opinions” decades later because they reevaluated their work. It’s insulting to a man who dedicated himself to film and made such marvelous visual journeys to give him such poor reviews. Obviously, he put a lot of work and effort into the film, and the actors gave it their all and this is a great example of a classic horror movie that resonates with audiences and one that I definitely will never forget. The images of those two girls haunts me to this day.

My rating: 9.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Rated R. Run Time: 146 minutes

Fun Facts from IMDB:

-According to Stephen King, the title is inspired by the refrain in the Plastic Ono Band's song, "Instant Karma" (by John Lennon), which features the chorus: "We all shine on."

-This was voted the ninth scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.