"A Masterpiece of Modern Horror" - The film's tagline.
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film that was directed, co-produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. The film is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name. Despite initially receiving mixed reviews from critics, The Shining is today regarded as a masterpiece, as well as one of the scariest and most influential films ever made. Martin Scorsese, an avid fan of Kubrick's films, ranked it as one of the 11 scariest horror movies of all time.
Summary[]
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) receives a job as a caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. His family of a wife named Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and a son named Danny (Danny Lloyd) also comes with him to stay at the hotel for the winter. However, Jack is truly at the hotel to write a book that he's been working on in a peaceful and quiet environment. As there is less peace and quiet within the hotel, Jack gets more and more angry that he can't write his book in peace.
Plot[]
Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaker position at the remote Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains, which closes every winter season. After his arrival, manager Stuart Ullman advises Torrance that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, killed his family and himself in the hotel.
In Boulder, Jack's son, Danny, has a premonition and seizure. Jack's wife, Wendy, tells the doctor about a past incident when Jack dislocated Danny's shoulder during a drunken rage. The incident convinced Jack to stop drinking alcohol. Before leaving for the seasonal break, head chef Dick Hallorann informs Danny of a telepathic ability the two share, which he calls "shining". Hallorann tells Danny the hotel also has a "shine" due to residues from unpleasant past events, and warns him to avoid Room 237.
Danny starts having frightening visions, including one of two twin sisters. Meanwhile, Jack's mental health deteriorates; he gets nowhere with his writing, is prone to violent outbursts, and has dreams of killing his family. Danny gets physically bruised after visiting an unlocked Room 237 out of curiosity. Jack encounters a female ghost in the room, but blames Danny for self-inflicting the bruises. Jack is enticed back to drinking by the ghostly bartender Lloyd. Ghostly figures, including Delbert Grady, then begin appearing in the Gold Room. Grady informs Jack that Danny has reached out to Hallorann using his "talent", and says that Jack must "correct" his wife and child.
Wendy finds the manuscript which Jack has been laboriously typing, which consists entirely of the words "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" written repeatedly. When Jack threatens her life, Wendy knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry, but she and Danny cannot leave due to Jack having previously sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat. Back in their hotel room, Danny says "redrum" aloud multiple times and even writes the word on the bathroom door. Wendy sees the word in the mirror and realizes that the word is actually "murder" spelled backwards. Jack is freed by Grady and goes after Wendy and Danny with an axe. Danny escapes outside through the bathroom window, and Wendy fights Jack off with a knife when he breaks through the door. Hallorann, having flown back to Colorado after Danny's telepathic SOS, reaches the hotel in another snowcat. His arrival distracts Jack, who ambushes and murders Hallorann in the lobby, then pursues Danny into the hedge maze. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering the hotel's ghosts and a vision of cascading blood similar to Danny's premonition.
In the hedge maze, Danny misleads Jack and hides behind a snowdrift while Jack follows a false trail. Danny and Wendy reunite and leave in Hallorann's snowcat, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the maze. In a photograph in the hotel hallway, Jack is pictured standing amidst a crowd of party revelers from July 4th, 1921.
Cast[]
- Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance
- Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance
- Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance
- Scatman Cothers as Dick Hallorann
- Joe Turkel as Lloyd the Bartender
- Barry Nelson as Stuart Ullman
- Philip Stone as Delbert Grady
- Lisa and Louise Burns as The Grady Twins
- Lia Beldam/Billie Gibson as Lorraine Massey
- Barry Dennen as Bill Watson
- Norman Gay as Horace M. Derwent
Interpretation and analysis[]
The ending of The Shining consists of an almost two-minute long camera shot that zooms into a picture of Jack Torrance at the July 4th Ball in 1921, right before fading to black and having the credits appear right after. At first thought, this does not make any sense; Torrance was not an adult in 1921. Just this picture of him has sparked wide debates over the meaning of the entire film. One of the most early interpretations was by Bill Blakemore, who suggested that the whole film was a metaphor representing the genocide of Native Americans.
During a tour of the hotel, Stuart Ullman tells Wendy that the staff had to fend off some Indian attacks because the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. This relates to the picture of the July 4th Ball, and Blakemore says that it is connected because the fourth of July was no "ball" or "celebration" to the Indians. It is also subliminal, but obvious, that there is lots of Indian artwork on the walls of the hotel, as well as an American flag near the ceiling of the large room where Jack writes his novel.