Classic Film Review: ‘The Shining’ 45 Years Later:  A Creepy Classic Maintains Timeless Mania

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd

Synopsis: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter, where a sinister presence influences the father into violence. At the same time, his psychic son sees horrifying forebodings from both the past and the future.

Is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining a horror movie? Perhaps in the modern sense, but if you make that determination, you’d have to believe it was the only one he’d ever made. It’s certainly scary, but now 45 years post-release, it may be more aptly placed in a genre all its own. The Shining would be one of the greatest horror movies of all time, but what it actually is has transcended any such definition. In simpler terms, the movie is “its own thing”.

Evidence for the film’s existence on a higher plane than just about any other can be found, much like other great works of art, in just how many copies, and copies or copies of it, that there are. Take It Chapter Two, for example, which releases four decades after The Shining. That one is a horror movie, no doubt, yet far less scary than the former. It also directly references the former in a way completely irrelevant to the plot, wherein a character shouts “Here’s Johnny!” towards the film’s climax.

Yes, Stephen King wrote both books, but for movies so far apart and otherwise completely unrelated, such a focused inclusion only nods to the overwhelming impact The Shining has had on the horror genre, whether or not it meant to. Kubrick’s film is one that you’ve got to be patient with; it’s a prodding narrative that seeps into your psyche with painstaking precision. It sneaks up on you, like a car you can’t hear running, and before you know it you, too, are running from an axe-wielding Jack Torrance. From that teal title card accompanied by an irreplaceable, natural film grain, the film’s eventual mania is immediately felt in a kind of encapsulated, instant vision.

Notoriously, King didn’t like this adaptation of his book at all, preferring a made for television version that would come a little later down the line. But that one didn’t have Jack Nicholson, so… why bother? It goes without saying, but Nicholson’s performance in The Shining is the driving core that makes the entire thing tick. It’s the same general impact that an action star may make on a big movie franchise, but on a much smaller scale and in one singular instance — and he isn’t just good towards the end, when he’s shouting and chasing and losing his mind.

Nicholson plants Torrance’s seed of unease very early on in the film, well before any of the characters around him care to recognize the potential evils that outline him. When he takes the job to care for the Overlook Hotel, his eventual descent appears to be faintly visible in the look he gives the man who makes the offer. It’s a life yet to be lived by a man who may not mentally be there just yet, but the writing’s on the wall. Just a brilliant performance that enough can’t possibly be said about.

That goes for the whole film, really. It’s one of those that you’re forced to turn your brain off for in the best way possible; could you nitpick it and find something to complain about? Sure, but why would you when what’s present is so passionately crafted that it puts most everything being released today to shame? Whether in the horror genre or elsewhere, this is the sort of once in a lifetime cinematic experience that permanently changed the way people saw the medium back in 1980. In fact, it hasn’t been the same since. A trip to the Overlook is the perfect antidote to any film buff who may feel bummed out after another mediocre trip to the movies; if all else fails, this is one you can boot up in any mood, at any time, for any reason, and it’ll do the trick and then some.

Grade: A