Review: The Shining (1980)

Genre: Horror

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers

Language: English

Runtime: 142 min.

In his preface to a recent edition of Pet Sematary, Stephen King mentions that most people find The Shining the scariest of all his novels (though his personal scariest is Pet Sematary). Written in the most prolific period of the author, it remains one of the best novels of modern horror. With its detailed characterization, thick sense of atmosphere and instances that elevate tension to unbearable levels, it has the right ingredients for a devastating horror movie. What more? It has the entire structure of a horror movie with all its subtleties built into it, and for a screenwriter it only takes to do minor changes to make it suitable for screen. But Kubrick along with his co-writer Diane Johnson opted to change the basic premises of the novel and has created a hollow, muddled screenplay with incredibly shallow characterization. As a result, even the best directorial efforts and production values were not able to provide an engrossing viewing experience.

The movie begins with a spectacular aerial ride towards Overlook hotel, showing how isolated it is from the rest of the world. It is the start of winter and the hotel is going to be closed for 5 months. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) attends an interview for the job of its winter caretaker. The manager sketches some background history of the hotel, about his job and about a 'cabin fever' incident that happened a decade ago when a winter caretaker cut his wife and two daughters into pieces with an axe, stacked them up in a room and blew his brains with a shotgun. Jack in not bothered and accepts the job.

Jack arrives with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) on the closing day. Jack is a writer with troubled history as schoolteacher and aims to complete his novel in the seclusion the hotel is going to provide. Wendy is a tame housewife who is not in the least angered even when her husband insults her in a shocking way. Danny is a psychic, a voice inside him gives glimpses of future events and people's minds. Later, the hotel's chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) meets them. He senses Danny's ESP power and calls it "Shining". He himself has shining power and warns Danny not to go into room 237. A month passes by and then starts a series of strange events surrounding Jack and family.

A major aspect that can make us sit through the entire movie is the overpowering sense of dread developed throughout. It is difficult to get more atmospheric than this. Imagine being all alone in a vast hotel where the nearest human is hundreds of kilometers away and you can't reach them because of the snow covered roads. But the screenplay doesn't satisfyingly transform dread into horror. In effect, the movie works well as five or ten minute segments but not as a coherent whole; it is too slack to prolong our interest till end. Many scenes has the camera zooming in on a character, slowly punctuated by a gradual increase in the tempo of eerie music, giving an expectation of something frightful to happen, only to abruptly cut into the next scene. This goes on and on till it eventually becomes tiresome. Basically, nothing much happens in the whole movie. Kubrick has not cared to develop suspense and culminate it in horror as much as he did to make the movie technically superior.

The characters are half developed at best. The movie depicts Jack not as a normal man going mad but as a man already unstable just tipping over the edge. When it takes over 2 hours for this to happen it feels too overstretched to contain our interest. Jack Nicholson's constant twisting of lips and eyebrows doesn't help either; soon it starts bordering on irritation. Shelley Duvall does better as a frightened mother, especially when trembling with fear in the staircase and bathroom scenes. In the novel, Danny's 'shining' plays a central role in holding the plot together and advancing it. This aspect is not fully utilized in the movie - it could have made less difference if Danny was a normal boy. The same goes with Halloran too, he doesn't have much to do.

One thing that has more presence than the characters is the Overlook itself. The deserted hotel simultaneously induces a sense of vastness and inescapable claustrophobia. The pristine interiors with all its rich colours, ornamental decorations, and carpeted floors and the enormously snow laden exterior makes it hard to believe that the entire hotel is a set built inside a studio. It is one of the most perfect sets ever created. The camera has a field's day along its halls, corridors and rooms showcasing the meticulousness that went into creating it. It is especially effective when it steadily follows Danny's tricycle throughout its course inside the hotel, in the long take. Cinematography is consistently ace, be it the opening aerial shots or the chase through the maze.

Another lifesaver is the music by John Alcott. The chilling and at times eerie music plays a major role in developing the pervasive sense of dread. As the film proceeds, it grows discordant perfectly matching the growing madness.

There are many stories of men doing gruesome acts when possessed by evil. But are they really possessed or just gone mad? What is the difference? While the novel chillingly brings out the nuances of a mind gradually getting possessed by evil, the movie tries to deviate by taking the 'mad' route at first but changes course towards the end. With its technical elegance, the movie could have been a great addition to the horror genre, had the screenwriters opted to be more faithful to the novel. At least it would have worked as a good psychological thriller had it maintained the same course till the end and ran 45 minutes lesser.