PopHorror Let's Get Scared
My favorite horror movie may be hands down, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It’s really not hard to figure out why that is when I go over this Kubrick masterpiece.
Jack Nicholson portrays Jack Torrance, a struggling writer, who takes on a position to look after the Overlook Hotel where he and his wife, Wendy, and son Danny, spend the winter. Afterwards, however, a series of paranormal events occur with a bunch of ghosts from the 1920s that should have been long dead.
That all begs the question: why is this my favorite horror movie? It’s a little more complicated than you would think.
Looking at how complicated and intricate this film is, is something to be studied. The Shining begins with Hector Berlioz’s iconic composition the Dies Irae, which is Latin for “Day of Wrath,” and in movies it is used to foreshadow death in the narrative. Having that knowledge, the audience already understands that death looms over them and we can only imagine who will die.
What’s great about the movie is that it doesn’t rely on jump-scares to frighten its audience. It works more as a psychological horror/thriller that bends and twists the perspectives of the audience.
The fact that the hotel seems to transport to and from timelines at different points in the story also implies that the building may possibly be in a temporal loop and forever stuck in said loop, unbeknownst to the people and caretakers at the time.
Moreover, the film is elevated above a simple slasher or monster movie through Nicholson’s incredible performance. Who knew the phrases, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” and “Here’s Johnny!” would strike so much fear into the hearts of horror lovers near and far?
The Shining is available on Google Play and Apple TV.
