HallowScream - The Shining (1980)

           Hey guys, Chuck here, and we're back with more HallowScream. For today's review, it's time, once again, to talk about Stephen King, and this time it's one of the most famous Stephen King movies of all time, The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Joe Turkel, and Philip Stone. 

          So, the movie is set at the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Mountains, where Jack Torrance is newly hired to serve as the Winter caretaker of the hotel, and he'll be staying at the hotel with his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny. While touring the hotel, Danny is revealed that have psychic powers, and we learn from a hotel staff member named Dick Halloran that this power is called "The Shining." Danny is also warned to stay out of Room 237, as he has no business going into that room. 

         As the days turn to weeks, and the weeks turn into months, we learn that the Overlook Hotel is crawling with malicious spirits haunting the place, and they have a particular taste for those with the Shining, which is why Danny becomes so affected by the spirits and by the hotel itself. Jack is also affected by the spirits, such as Lloyd the Bartender and Delbert Grady, in a different way, as they use their influence to control him and force him to slowly lose his inhibitions, until he starts to go after his family with an axe. Ultimately, Halloran (who Danny used the Shining to reach for help) has arrived to help Wendy and Danny, but is killed by Jack, who follows Danny into the frozen hedge maze, eventually freezing to death himself, while Wendy and Danny flee the Overlook and get to safety. The last shot we see is of Jack in a photo of a fancy party. 

          Now, despite what a majority of critics and audiences thought of the movie, Stephen King himself isn't a fan, having expressed his disdain for the way Jack Nicholson portrayed the character of Jack Torrance. King's rationale is that Nicholson's Jack Torrance looks like a crazy person right from the start. Now, I have a different outlook on that, and my views are very similar to that of the Nostalgia Critic. While, yes, the book and a later adaptation of the book in the form of a TV miniseries starring Steven Weber as Jack Torrance had his descent into insanity as more of a tragedy, Nicholson's was very different. Instead of a normal person driven to be insanity, we have here a crazed person having the layers of built up pretense and inhibitions peeled away, leaving only the crazy man in plain view. As the spirit of Delbert Grady tells Jack, he was "always the caretaker." In other words, Jack was always a part of the Overlook Hotel. It's not that he's being driven mad by the hotel, he's always been mad, and it just took the hotel to draw the madness to the surface. But again, that's just my perspective of Jack Nicholson's version of Jack Torrance. 

        As far as the rest of the cast goes, Shelly Duvall was great as Wendy, and admittedly director Stanley Kubrick made her truly terrified on set to get the most visceral performance out of her that he could get. Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers are terrific as Danny and Halloran, and it's truly eerie when Danny starts to lose his grip and repeat the word "redrum" which when written on a wall, appears as the word "murder" spelled backwards. Joe Turkel is excellent here as Lloyd the Bartender, as is Philip Stone as Delbert Grady. But what truly makes this movie such a horror classic comes to Stanley Kubrick's directing. Kubrick uses long takes and still shots to draw out the tension, this making for a more terrifying film than just cheap jump scares that look silly. 

         Now, I'm sure that there are plenty of Stephen King fans who prefer the miniseries version of The Shining, but for my money, slow and visceral horror is more terrifying than a drawn out miniseries that talks about the scary stuff rather than showing it. It's for that reason that I'm giving Stanley Kubrick's The Shining a rating of 5/5. This is Chuck signing off, and HallowScream  will be back with the newest chapter of the Halloween franchise: Halloween Ends.