In 1977, Stephen King, famous horror story writer, released his book titled The Shining. It was a pretty disturbing book that a lot of people enjoyed. So much, that it even got a movie made, directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick had not worked on horror movies before, so he wanted to give The Shining a shot. That sort of work ended up leading to one of the most influential and most iconic and greatest horror movies of all time… In my opinion anyway.



The Shining follows Jack Torrance, a writer suffering from writer's block, who takes the job watching over the Overlook Hotel for the winter, along with his wife Wendy and son Danny. However, as time goes by in the Overlook Hotel, and Jack still can’t get past his writer’s block, strange things start to happen around the hotel. Danny is constantly seeing visions of ghosts and blood, and is harmed by them, Wendy tries to help Danny get through this, and as time goes on, Jack’s sanity diminishes more and more as he stays in the hotel. I could always trust Stanley Kubrick to make a good movie, and certainly, this was one movie that I think was one of his best. Yes, even more than A Clockwork Orange and 2001: Space Odyssey. That may be opinion based, but I don’t care. This movie is filled with some of the scariest imagery and disturbing scenes I think I’ve ever seen in a movie. And given that this movie was released in 1980, that says a lot.



The movie has a lot of visions in this movie that you can definitely call scary. There’s the two sister ghosts that talk at the same time, the elevator full of blood, the woman in Room 237, the ghosts that can be seen all over the bar, the… whatever the hell the fur suit was. That was pretty scary. This movie gives you a lot of subtlety in it. Nothing is ever directly told to you. Everything is told through imagery rather than words. I think show, don’t tell is the best way to use horror. Whenever you want to make something scary, it’s best to just show it. Let the viewer look at it and make up what they see scary about it. Don’t describe it to them and limit the thought of the audience. That is what I think The Shining does right. It does showing and not telling perfectly, down to a T. Nothing in this movie is directly told. Even down to the end, which, I won’t spoil, but it was so ambiguous and so unexplained, that it has people talking about it even to this day. That is something that I think makes this movie timeless. That ambiguous horror. And that’s one of the reasons why I love it. But even this movie has some horror in your face, and that manages to be just as scary. And that horror comes in the form of Jack Torrance himself.



If you ever want to guarantee your movie villain is going to be scary, just get Jack Nicholson to play as him. Nicholson is a pretty scary person. Maybe he’s a nice guy in real life, but I don’t want to find out, because The Shining made me scared of every time he laughs. I mean, if he’s acting good enough to where you want to see a rapist get out safely in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you know you have a damn good actor. And Nicholson is just as good in The Shining. As he goes throughout the movie, you can see that, even in the beginning of the film, he is a disturbed man. Suffering from alcohol and unable to write anything. This is only added when he heads to the Overlook Hotel. As the movie goes on, you see his sanity slowly decreasing, and you see it just in the expressions he makes and how he doesn’t even have to say a word to make him scary. And near the third act of the movie (Spoilers), he completely goes into crazy mode, trying to kill his own family, all with a disturbing smile on his face the entire time. It’s bizarre. There were times when Kubrick didn’t tell the cast about what Nicholson would do, in hopes of getting a genuine scare. That may be bad on his part, but at least it gave a very believable and scary movie, and it’s all because Nicholson is scary as hell.



It’s obvious that I love the Shining, and how couldn’t I? It’s a movie that manages to have subtle horror, and a creepy villain, and a interesting story to want you to watch until the end. And I did watch it to the end… about thirty five times to be exact. I love the movie, okay? The movie was popular enough to be seen as one of the best horror movies ever, and made a lot of appearances in other movies, even some kids movies like Toy Story… yes, they have references to an R rated horror movie in a Pixars movie… Why not. If you haven’t seen this movie, I really do recommend it. It really is a timeless film. Take care.

Up next on October Movie Marathon: The goriest effects out there