Movies at Halloween: In the build-up to Halloween, I will be looking back at a selection of movies worth checking out at this time of year. As I have already written about the best modern horror movies, I will focus on different films this time around that will get you in the Halloween spirit. You can find my previous articles on Mandy and What We Do in the Shadows here and here.

Most people know that there is more to The Shining than a madman attempting to kill his annoying family while chopping doors down to kindling. Did you know that Stephen King hates it? You probably do. Did you know that director Stanley Kubrick would not stop until he got the perfect take? You probably do. The Shining has been written about more than most other movies and for that reason, I will not be attempting to cover anything new here. Instead, I will be simply looking at why it is one of the best-made horror movies ever.

The Story

Stephen King’s 1977 novel tells the rather straightforward ghost story of a man who takes a job as a caretaker in a haunted hotel and attempts to kill his wife and son due to the unseen forces at play. Kubrick deepened King’s story by adding a sense of mystery to the proceedings. A lot of information about the spooky events is left out and ultimately the audience is left to decide what happens to Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) at the end. The film is more concerned with atmosphere and a sense of place than anything as trivial as logic.

The Setting

While this may not be the best horror film ever made, it certainly has one of the best settings of any horror movie. Kubrick’s camera prowls the corridors of the hotel and takes in every detail to such an extent that The Overlook is embedded in pop-culture memory. Everything from the impractical structure of the building to the lurid suggestions in the carpet suggests that the place could be nothing but sinister. Kubrick also creates the sense that the horrors visited upon Jack, Danny and Wendy come from the hotel as much as the supernatural beings.

The Director

As good as Nicholson and the other performers are in the movie, it is Kubrick’s direction that makes this still worth singing home about. While he was meticulous and relentless in getting what he needed, the results speak for themselves. There are negative points such as the fact that the movie is overlong in places and we have been desensitised to ghostly children in the years of films since. Yet, it is how he creates the slow descent into madness and builds to that famous final act that truly matters.

The Legacy

The Shining seems to be never far from public consciousness in recent years. The fantastic and obsessive 2012 documentary Room 237 documents the vast array of fan theories that surround the movie. These include many, many conjectures such as the belief that the film is Kubrick’s confession that he faked the moon landing or the idea that it is secretly about the Holocaust. In the last couple of years, we even had a key scene revisited in blockbuster Ready Player One and the sequel Doctor Sleep is about to be released. If you go back further, you also have the brilliant Simpsons version in Treehouse of Horror V.

Final Thoughts

There seems to be something about The Shining that inspires or causes obsession in equal measure. It is a film that creates a sense of unease from the moment the camera flies over the lake at the beginning to the final (still) head-scratching reveal. Whether you like this film or not, you cannot deny the craft that is on display. No pressure then, Doctor Sleep.

Image Credit: File:Overlook Hotel Carpet (15682295092).jpg by Robson# from Blighty, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), some rights reserved.

Disclaimer Notice: Any thoughts and opinions expressed here are solely my own. Any images (copyrighted or otherwise) have been used according to Creative Commons and if needed, have been referenced to the best of my knowledge.

© 2020 Kelly’s Film Guide