Original Vs. Remake: The Shining

THE SHINING is the story of three people being trapped in one location for the winter, but there's a lot going on with the people in that location. Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic with anger issues who has gotten a job working as the caretaker at a secluded hotel during the off season, thinking the isolation will help him focus on his writing. He has brought his wife and young son, who has psychic abilities, along with him. Unfortunately there are evil spirits lurking at the hotel who torment the kid and turn Jack into a homicidal maniac. The psychic / haunting aspect is intriguing, while the idea of a father breaking down to the point where he starts chasing his wife and son around with an axe is deeply disturbing.

This isn't an effects-heavy film, and a couple of the most incredible effects don't involve blood or ghosts. The snow was an effect, accomplished by bringing in 900 tons of salt and crushed styrofoam. The massive hedge maze didn't completely exist, the shot that makes it look like it goes on forever while characters are walking around inside it is trickery. But there are some bloody corpses, and a disgusting decaying corpse rises from a bathtub. Of course, the most iconic special effect of all involves a flood of blood escaping from an elevator shaft, pouring out into a hallway and sweeping away furniture. Today this would be an underwhelming CGI effect, but when this was made they were pouring blood through a miniature set.

Some people complain about Jack Nicholson's performance in this film, saying his Jack Torrance seems like he's insane from the moment he first appears. I don't think that's quite accurate, although he's always a bit of a condescending ass. I think Nicholson's depiction of Jack's growing madness is awesome, and once the character has fully cracked he's simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. As Jack's wife Wendy, Shelley Duvall was put through hell on set and suffered from nervous exhaustion. Her meek, dim Wendy seems doomed from the start. She's not a strong character, but at least she can swing a baseball bat well enough. Six-year-old Danny Lloyd made his screen debut as little Danny Torrance and is fully convincing in the role, even though he didn't know he was making a horror movie.

Of course THE SHINING is intense, you don't get the reputation of being one of the greatest horror films of all time (a reputation I feel the movie deserves) by being tame. There's an atmosphere of dread hanging over it from the start, and it builds in intensity as it goes along until it reaches that climactic chase. The shots, the editing, and the music work together to make even the simplest images unsettling. This movie contains some of the most iconic moments in horror history, and made people just as afraid (or even more so) of two dead little girls standing in a hallway than of a maniac with an axe. 

Stanley Kubrick is one of the most highly respected filmmakers we've ever had, and he was a notorious perfectionist. Even coming off a critical and box office failure (BARRY LYNDON), he still had the budget and freedom he required to make this movie exactly the way he wanted to make it. He spent more than a year on principal photography, and was able to because he was the producer, so there was nobody to fire him. I don't condone the way Shelley Duvall was treated during production and I don't think it's necessary to shoot over 100 takes of the simplest scenes, but I can't argue with the results. THE SHINING is an amazing film, meticulously crafted and brilliantly shot.