"The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick: a review

"The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, is a horror and a thriller film based on the Novel “Stephen King”. It is familiar to the literature of ghosts haunted house which was turned into a hotel with par natural events which took place with a family of a couple with a child who had paranormal powers.

According to the Shining film, Jack Torrance an alcoholic and unemployed and a failed teacher and a writer of books, accepts the job as a caretaker in a huge hotel at Colorado. He was assured of not having a heavy work but he had to face the severe winter. The Director also said that previously a man called Delbert Grady had stayed there with his wife and daughters, but he had suffered nervous breakdown. Jack Torrance went to live with his wife Wendy and his son Danny. Danny had telepathic powers.

The cook Halloran reveals that he has some powers. He calls this telepathic power as “Shining” by which he could predict and speak to the dead. He warns the cook not to be afraid of any bloody events that might take place in the hotel. Halloran prohibited Danny not to enter the room No.237. He continued saying that if Danny needed to call him for help.

Jack continued to write Novels, Wendy did the house work and Danny would play with his tricycle or toys. Once Wendy, the wife tried to read what jack wrote, that the drives crashed. After this event Danny began to have disturbing visions. He met two daughters murdered by Mr. Grady ten years earlier. He would see the rivers of blood on the corridors but Danny tries to be brave.

Jack’s psychic equilibrium began to dwindle. Wendy began to suspect and Danny disobeyed the order of Halloran, he entered the Room. No 237. He had the strange experience of encountering a woman’s dead body in the advanced stage of putrefaction. It struggled to strangle him. Wendy begged Jack to test the reality. The woman claimed that Wendy had to go away. Jack was annoyed with his wife and Danny doubting them of trying to ruin his work for which he had worked hard. Jack was impatient with his family.

Jack began to roam around the hotel and finally he reached the ballroom where the costume party was held in 1921. Between the dream and the reality Jack meets Mr. Grady, the former caretaker of the hotel. Grady tried to take advantage over Jack to punish saying that Halloran was coming to take them. But Danny had already called Halloran telepathically for help. It was difficult for Halloran to reach for the cause of snowfall.

Wendy reads the pages of Jack who says that “Work only and not play” makes Jack a bored guy. After knowing this connection, Wendy wounds with the Baseball Bat and closes Jack in the pantry. Jack reveals that he had Sabotaged the radio and the snowmobile so it was not possible for them to leave the hotel.

Jack makes use of the ax used by Grady to reach Wendy and Danny, who had barricaded themselves in the bathroom. Wendy managed to escape and Danny from the window too. Jack managed to break the panels, trying to slip in to open the doors, Wendy wounded the hands with the kitchen knife, Halloran came with a snow cat, but he was assassinated by the crowds with an ax to the chest. While jack tried to chase Danny, the raging snow storm becomes a great attraction. Danny and Wendy tried to get in the snowmobile Halloran and Jack was lost in the blizzard.

The body of Jack was frozen to death with an ax in his hand, in the midst of snow . A photo of Jack smiling in the midst of people at the hotel during the costume party in 1921 attracts everybody’s attention.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is thought to be a classic in the horror genre. During the movie Shelley Duvall is said to have gotten sick due to arguing with Mr. Kubrick and lost some of her hair from the stress. Jack Nicholson, who worked so hard during the filming it was said that he would come home, fall into bed and was fast asleep almost immediately.

The script was changed over and over again according to information obtained so much so that it is said that Nicholson would throw copies of his lines away when he received them because he knew they would be changed.