The Shining Review

All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy in Academy-Award winning director Stanley Kubrick's horror classic, The Shining. Kubrick uses his wild imagination to create the most unforgettable psychological horror film in the history of cinema based on the bestselling novel from the master of horror himself, Stephen King. The plot follows author Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy and their son Danny spending five months in a hotel called "The Overlook" in the isolated mountains of Colorado after Jack is given the job of the caretaker while the other one goes on vacation. However, he warns them that a previous caretaker went insane and murdered his family. But the family is completely comfortable about spending time in the hotel. That is until Danny possesses a supernatural power known as "The Shining" that allows him to see the hotel's dark past finding out the hotel is haunted by the ghosts of the murdered family. To make make matters worse, as the harsh winter arrives and the family is stranded inside, Jack living in isolation and struggling with a writers block and troubled by the hotel's past begins to lose his sanity, slowly descending into madness causing him to turn on his family members. Will Wendy and Danny be able to escape the perilous hotel before it's too late? After I watching "The Shining" last night, it was much scarier than I anticipated. Most of all, Jack Nicholson gives a creepy and comedic Oscar-worthy performance. The film has plenty of iconic moments such as Danny encountering the ghosts of the murdered Grady twins and the famous scene where Jack Torrance sticks his head through the door and shouts, "Here's Johnny!". Like Ridley Scott's Alien, Kubrick makes a good use of setting such as a hotel high up in the mountains to give viewers a feeling of isolation and to make the safety of your own home creepier. Also, the Overlook hotel gives you a feeling of claustrophobia-the fear of enclosed spaces. Unlike most horror films, what makes "The Shining" so unique is rather than focusing on something supernatural like ghosts, demons, monsters, and aliens the film instead focuses on the mentally unstable brain of a normal human being. It's also a good movie to watch for those of you during quarantine since this is a movie about being in isolation. So if you ever find this horror masterpiece, turn out the lights and enjoy the movie for the thrill ride it is.