With Halloween less than a week away, I’ve been thinking a lot about Halloween movies and horror movies as well. Last week I posted that my favorite Halloween movie was Arsenic and Old Lace. Today I’d like to talk about my favorite flat out horror movie and that is The Shining. Obviously this is a very subjective idea and many people would claim The Exorcist is the best horror movie. Others will sight Rosemary’s Baby or Alien and still others will call out slasher movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween and Saw. Those would all be fine choices and you couldn’t be faulted for picking any of those as your favorite horror film.
Full disclosure here. I am a Stanley Kubrick fan. A Clockwork Orange is my favorite movie of all time and some of my other favorites are Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Full Metal Jacket. However, the reason The Shining is my favorite horror movie is not because it was made by my favorite director.
The Shining is my favorite horror movie because it has the best story of any horror movie.
Everyone knows that it was based on the Stephen King novel, and nearly everyone knows that it barely resembles it. Certainly anyone who has read the book and seen the movie knows that the movie took little from the book other than the title and the premise. But the story that Kubrick weaved of a family man falling into madness as the solitude of spending the winter as the caretaker of a Colorado hotel slowly takes its toll is a primal story. There’s also the added element of wonder, as in wondering what’s really happening. Is this all in Jack’s head, or is this hotel really haunted. As an audience, we’re never really sure if Jack is just going crazier by the minute or if there really are ghosts in the hotel telling him to kill his family.
I’m not going to retell the storyline here, but The Shining is a very well structured story with strong archetypes and a high level of drama. There is a strong first act as Jack, Danny and Wendy get to know their new surroundings. The first half of Act II shows Danny and Jack in very different ways coming into contact with the supernatural influences of the hotel. The second half of Act II shows Jack starting to succomb to those influences while Danny fights them. And finally, Act III blows it all up in an orgy of violence, psychological pathology and maternal love.
The second act especially has a rising tension that moves from uncomfortable to terrifying.
The reason for that is because the script has been written in a way that makes you actually care about the characters, and feel concern for them when they’re actually in danger. Other than Rosenary’s Baby I cant’ think of another horror film where you care so much about the characters.
Critics have often knocked Kubrick by saying that his characters lack emotion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Does it look like Wendy is devoid of emotion as Jack is breaking the door open with an axe? Does she lack emotion where she thinks she’s going to read Jack’s novel, but rather finds page after page of, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”? Jack and Danny display plenty of emotion throughout the film and that also helps the audience engage with them and allows the audience to root for them and care for them in a meaningful way.
Something else that The Shining has that other horror films lack are its strong thematic elements.
This is ultimately a story about the dissolution of the family and the consequences of fathers losing their place in families, whether voluntarily or not. It’s those thematic elements that make this film so powerful and one that resonates beyond its genre.
It’s not a slasher film, but it’s graphically violent. It’s not a psychological thriller, but it keeps you guessing. It lacks the gratuitous sexuality of a lot of horror films, but still has full frontal nudity. But that’s Stanley Kubrick. He was able to adopt several styles of film making and seamlessly make them his own. He made one of the most iconic Science-Fiction films of all time in 2001: A Space Odyssey; he made one of the great War films of all time with Paths of Glory; Dr. Strangelove is commonly referred to as one of cinema’s greatest comedies. And The Shining is one of the greatest horror films ever and my personal favorite.