The Shining

The Shining was one of Kubrick’s last movies.  To be precise, it was 3^rd to last.  After The Shining, Kubrick made Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut.  By then, Kubrick had dabbled with all sorts of genres – Thriller (The Killing), War (Fear & Desire), Dark Comedy (Dr. Strangelove), SciFi (2001) – you name it.  The only one conspicuously missing was Horror.  And what a movie The Shining turned out to be.

Some guidelines while watching The Shining – Watch after it is dark.  Ensure that all lights are turned off.  Ideally ensure that the air conditioner is on high cool but preferably in an ultra silent mode.  Try watching it on a system that has solid sound and features such as surround sound – of course, turn all these features on.  If you can do all of this and ensure you are alone, you are in for a ride of a lifetime.

With someone like me, being alone was also not required.  The Shining is a story about The Overlook Hotel somewhere in the Colorado that shuts down during the heavy winter periods that make it all but unreachable.  If you are one who doesn’t have a deep financial crisis or a desire to be alone in the middle of nowhere, you may not consider the job Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) readily agrees – probably for reasons mentioned.

The Torrances – Jack, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and 6 year old Danny (Danny Lloyd) move in just before the winter sets in as caretakers for the few months that the hotel is shut.  I don’t know about you but if I were Jack Torrance, I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.  If taken, I would have been driven insane in a few hours.  Jack on the other hand takes a few days to get there.

The Shining is what horror movies should take inspiration from.  It is one of the earliest examples of how the unknown can be far more creepy than blood, gore and green puke – not that these aren’t effective but the fact is that sound and light when used well can be far, far, far more potent weapons if the intent is to seed fear in the minds of the audience.

Stanley Kubrick uses long winding shots that give the promise of something scary but eventually don’t give anything.  But all of that is only to build up to something really scary when you would least expect it.  Kubrick shows the process by which Jack Torrance slowly but surely slides down towards a breakdown.  The process itself is scarier beyond belief.

And of course there is the sequence that includes one of the scariest moments in cinema – HERE’S JOHNNY!!! It is only natural if you were to petrified with this or for that matter the “Red Rum” sequence or the woman in the bath tub or with the twins.  The Shining is indeed one of the scariest movies of all time.  9 on 10 because even as just a movie it has to be on your must watch list of all time.

Watch the trailer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guf3HqeF3Ck