Filmic Frighteners 2019 - The Shining (15)

Redrum. Redrum. REDRUM.

The Gist: Jack Nicholson is Jack Torrence - a struggling writer, who takes a job as winter caretaker in the Rocky Mountain-ensconced Overlook Hotel. To this rambling art-deco mansion he brings his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny, intent on using Colorado's long cold-season to pen a literary blockbuster. But the Overlook has a dark and bloody history, one that seems literally to haunt its rooms and corridors. Little Danny can see it all too, with the extra-sensory perception he has come to know as 'the shining'. But as the snow storms hit and communication with the outside world is cut off, he and his mother can do nothing to prevent the Overlook's evil twisting his father's mind to insanity and violence.

The Juice: The Shining is widely regarded as a horror classic and a (dare I say) shining example of director Stanley Kubrick's genius. Who am I to question that? Well I'm Ed of Ed's Filmic Forays, so allow me to do so, just a little. Look - where visuals and soundscape are concerned, there's a rich perfection to this film that begins with the vast hotel and leads into the horrific fates befalling the central characters. Moments like Danny being tracked at ground level around the Overlook as he pedals frantically on his tricycle, Wendy discovering what her husband has really been writing and Jack chopping his way through anything that gets between him and his prey are deservedly iconic. Kubrick (as ever) knows the story he wants to tell and is supremely well-equipped to tell it. But it's the story itself I find problematic, as did the writer of the source novel - Stephen King. 

I'm fine with many of the liberties taken in adaptation. The maze that replaces King's creepy topiary animals in the hotel grounds works in well with the place's labyrinthine interiors as a metaphor for what is happening to the Torrence family. The relative lack of exposition regarding the hotel's history gives an eerily impressionistic feel when ghosts appear in the bar and the bathrooms. I'm even down with the movie's deep-freeze ending as replacement to the novelist's hot and literally explosive one. But the central character of Jack is all wrong. Nicholson's memorably intense performance as the demented writer/caretaker is undeniably entertaining, and once seen never forgotten. But it also lacks nuance. Frankly he's too crazy too soon, with no sense - however flawed - of a loving husband and father going off the rails. Hence when he descends into madness there's no real surprise, or horror, or tragedy. Basically there's no character arc. As for Shelley Duvall, she plays Wendy's terror memorably (not least due to that floppy arm thing she keeps doing), but it would mean so much more if we'd felt a hint of some loving connection in the first place. No?

The Judgement: 7.5/10. The Shining looks and sounds magnificent and is so replete with stick-in-your-brain images that I have to score it high. But not top-storey high. While young actor Danny Lloyd is terrific as his knowing and increasingly traumatised namesake, the overall Torrence family dynamic is underdeveloped. The film-making technique of this much-lauded horror is unimpeachable. But emotionally the whole thing strikes me as hollow.

Personal Fear Factor: Jack's nutzoid schtick makes me laugh and there's an undeniable chill in his terrorising of poor Wendy in the film's latter stages. But it's Danny's psychologically scarring encounters with the Overlook's ghosts that really hit home.