The Shining was an adaption from the Stephen King novel to film by Stanley Kubrick in 1980. The film redesigned the Horror genre and delved into the themes of violence, repetition, and reincarnation. Jack Torrance accepts a job to be a caretaker in the Overlook Hotel for the winter with nobody but his family around as the snow traps them at the hotel. He learns early on that the Hotel has a bloody history including one of the past caretakers loosing his mind and killing his family. The film is filled with foreshadowing. Jacks wife, Wendy, mentions the Donner Party on the drive to the hotel which creates the setting of isolation leading to brutality. Wendy also excitedly compares the Overlook to being like a ghost ship which sets up the presence of spirits in the film. The audience also learns that the hotel is built on an Indian burial ground which gives the Overlook a disturbing history that leads up to the violent and supernatural events that occur. Jack looses his mind pretty quickly into his stay at the hotel, and the audience starts to see him follow the tendencies of the past caretaker and it becomes apparent that the spirits of the hotel are convincing Jack to kill his family. The real antagonist of this film isn’t a living person, but the haunted hotel itself.

The shining was a new kind of horror film that Kubrick thought was going to be the scariest horror film ever made. Early reviews of the film didn’t agree that the film was even in the horror genre. The 1980 film comment by Richard T. Jameson only gives praise for Kubrick’s untraditional use of camera effects. Jameson loves how the use of the tracking method to follow characters around the hotel backed with a horrific soundtrack gives the film a suspenseful and terrifying feel, but he feels like the film didn’t do enough to live up to the title of the scariest horror film of all time.

In contrast, the film seems to have grown in popularity over the years to some. Roger Ebert’s 2006 review had nothing bad to say about the film. He explores the idea of which character’s perspective is most reliable, concluding that the chef, Dick, has the most trustworthy point of view, although he dies pretty quickly after returning to the Overlook. Ebert discusses the film’s ambiguity and different views on how the ending can be interpreted with Jack being shown in one of the hotel’s pictures from 1921. Was Jack reincarnated and drawn back to the Overlook to return to evil ways, or was the spirit of Jack absorbed into the hotel after his monstrosities? All in all he praises Kubrick’s film-making and story-telling.

Historically, the film was designed to call in fans of the Horror genre. The trailer of the film depicted only an elevator that eventually started gushing an enormous wave of blood onto the screen. This trailer depicted the film as being a terrifying nightmare, much scarier than it actually turned out to be. The marketing department that produced the trailer wanted to hype the audience up for a bloodbath, since that’s what brings viewers into a horror film, but the film itself didn’t live up to the shocking amount of blood in the trailer.

The poster that advertised the film shows a madman-looking Jack as if he just escaped from a psychiatric hospital and a terrified Wendy screaming in horror. The poster contributes to the theme of a horror-filled film. It portrays that the film will be filled with action and scream-curdling scenes. The poster even refers to the movie as the “tide of terror,” which the film does not live up to.
The film started out as a conventional film, but ended with a very unconventional ending. When Jack showed up in the picture from 1921, it left more questions than answers. The film had a budget of $19 million, and created a revenue of $44 million, so it made a huge impact on the public, but more so as the movie aged than when it was first released.

The Shining is definitely a film worth watching, although if you are looking for the scariest horror film in history, I would look elsewhere. After finishing the film at one o’clock in the morning, I was a little freaked out, looking for axe murders in my closet who weren’t there, but it didn’t provide the type of horror experience that the filmmakers and marketing team hyped it up to be. The film focused more on the character’s phycological reaction to the spirit of the overlook. We watched Jack become corrupted by the spirits. Another film that didn’t quite do justice to the novel, The Shining only has a place in history because of the film work by Kubrick, the amazing performance by Nicholson, and the haunting soundtrack that accompanies the film.