Grade A Horror

The Shining is a unique horror film. The fear in this film is inherently real, playing on the feelings of isolation, claustrophobia, a touch of possession and a decent amount of insanity for good measure. Based off of Stephen King’s novel, Stanley Kubrick takes the horror film to the next level in this disturbing portrayal of a Colorado hotel and the family that is driven to shear madness inside its walls, during a horrific winter season. Jack Torrance the antagonist of the film is driven to madness by the ghosts of The Overlook Hotel but particularly by a father just like himself, Delbert Grady, who chopped his family up into pieces, stacked them neatly in Room 237 and then took his own life. The tale of Grady is relayed early in the film and therefore gives the audience the privilege of foreshadowing; we can recognize early on that the stint with the Torrance family is going to look a lot like the life of the Grady clan. This early sneak peek of the film heightens our sense of fear. We begin to wonder, when will Jack go crazy; slowly but surely the process unfolds and with the constant howling of the wind outside, the extravagant and lavish hotel inside, morphs for Jack and the audience into a cage of madness.

In The Shining, the never ending carpets, the creaky wood floors, the drastically colored rooms and the high-key lighting, very unusual for a horror film, call out the inner mad man in each of its specters. Though its likely most of the audience would not be driven to murder their family while living inside of a hotel, the film cast a shadow of claustrophobia begging the question; would we be alright if we had to stay in The Overlook Hotel? We just like Wendy and Danny, have no place to escape from the snow, the ghosts or from Jack.  Kubrick amps up the idea of isolation and claustrophobia to almost suffocating proportions. In the brilliant tracking scenes of Danny at the end of the film when running within the hedge maze on the hotel’s property we can see nothing but hedges and snow giving the feeling of cabin fever, making us wonder will we along with Danny and Wendy make it out alive? Enhanced by Jack Nicholson’s superb acting, The Shining is a glowing example of what really makes people shrivel in fright.