Which is more horrific: being chased by a man possessed by a ghost, or being chased by a man in which you truly know that he wasn't possessed by any entity but himself alone? Both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick posed to ask the questions in this adaptation-to-big-screen horror classic The Shining. It's such a shame, and an embarassment to frustrated movie critics like me for not having watched this film an earlier time (especially during those childhood years when we're easily spooked by horror tales), that I have seen this in a such an age unfitting for horror-movie viewing. I'm not easily spooked anymore, and if I watch a horror film, it should be at least hardcore enough to scare the wits out of me, or even make me jump a bit. Slasher flicks don't appeal to me anymore, and I find recent remakes so rubbish that they belong to the dump and not to the theaters. However, The Shining, is an exception. It's not a physical screaming type of film, as though you're shivering in fright and real, unadulterated terror, but more on the psychological distress that only a few horror movies succeed to bring to the edge. The Shining is disturbing not by the fact that a kid and his mother was stuck in a big empty hotel on a winter night being chased by their own father with a big pick-axe supposedly possessed by a ghost, but by the idea of stripping the ghost story from it and just leave the scene with the father possessed by no one and butchering his family to death.

This is where Stanley Kubrick deliberately succeeds to the triumph slot in creating this film. He had filmed one of the most disturbing horror epics ever, and scares viewers not of chases but in moods and very scary atmosphere of the haunted Overlook Hotel. If I've got to compare it to the book, I have to say I prefer the film although I feel thankful for Stephen King's story. Kubrick amazingly stirs blood and raises the hairs by putting sets and scenes that are not distracting to the eyes but chilling to the mind. From the eerie corridors and the expanse of the empty hotel, Kubrick uses slow-moving camera to expose the deafening silence of the scenes. He also wanted to expose the doubt whether what really possessed Jack Torrance, was it ghost, or was it his past?

Jack Torrance is a man with a horrible past, alcoholic and physically brutal teacher in a secondary school, who wanted to change and accepted a caretaking job in the Overlook Hotel. Although he was warned that sometimes too much isolation could unscrew rational screws in the brain, he disses them off and say it would be perfect for his writing career. But as he slowly realises the unearthly echoes of the hotel, especially at night, uninvited guests, masked people in the elevator, the lady in the room 217 and the voices in the corridor - a ghost in him was also resurrected. He was blamed by his own wife for hitting his son, and by this, as what Sigmund Freud once said that man is stripped off with consciousness and left with the id and nothing alone, he's the most savage animal alive.

I completely bow down to the performance by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. Nicholson is magnificent and so extraordinary that you adore the talents of this man, and also to Shelley Duvall for her understated performance. She once said in the interview that most people give their appreciation to Kubrick and Nicholson, leaving her under their massive shadows, and completely forgot about her performance in the film. It's supposed to be her, in which we should thank for also, for this energy-draining performance from her. Imagine that bathroom scene where she locked herself up while Jack Torrance was smashing the door open with an axe, she did the screaming scene for 117 times. Imagine that, how cruel Kubrick could be. And Shelley Duvall said she hates Kubrick for being so perfectionist, but loved him at the end for bringing out the best in her. And halfway in the film up to the end, her character had been crying most of the times and screaming, what an unbelievable performance from you Ms Duvall.

The Shining is that classic most people are still willing to revisit even today. In fact, it's one of the very best horror films ever. Bo-hoo to this latest deluge of B horror films.


Rating: A