The Shining an Homage to the Haunting Quality of Cinema

Viewer discretion is highly advised! This is one of the greatest examples of a film that features fear of the unknown. The film is great because the terror is psychological, not just supernatural. While watching we’re not sure what’s real and what’s in the minds of the characters. Are there evil spirits or are we seeing hallucinations? 

What makes a horror/suspense film so great is its setting. A good director will box their characters in. They confine them in a danger zone that they cannot escape from. What makes this film so terrifying is the setting. It’s the power of the fear of this film: they can’t leave the hotel. 

So the set up is very effective: trapped in a small world they cannot escape and tormented by a frightening power that may or may not exist. There’s no way out or to understand the evil that exists.

This play of horror and hallucination plays all the way to the end. The final shot is a slow walk up to pictures on a wall as ball music plays in the background. We zoom on one picture and see that one of the characters in the film is flashing a creepy grin and staring straight at the camera. How is this current character also in the past? That highlights a he idea of being haunted, which means having the sense you aren’t alone: there is something beyond time there with you, and this is supernatural and perhaps to be feared. 

This final shot does two things: #1 first Kubrucks shot is a metaphor of the moving picture. As we see an image of images, and we move slowly past the images. What is motion picture? Pictures in motion, at twenty four frames per second. 

But #2 it totally baffles us as to what was actually going on in the plot. It’s not the overlook hotel that’s haunted, it’s the movie, or better yet the movies that are haunted. We are looking into them as into a reflective pond, and what we see is ourselves in the movies, staring back at ourselves. 

The shining, we fear the unknown, the supernatural. The greatest fear we could ever have is the fear of God. Check out my review of Jaws for more on that!