“The Shining” is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, not due to the cliché reasons like blood, gore, and madness, but for the sound/music, cinematography, color theory, and more. “The Shining” is a movie that you can watch a million times and find something new each time. This should be considered as the movie that gave Stanley Kubrick his name as a director; this movie proved what he is capable of. 

Mr. Kubrick did not waste one second; the movie starts off with the family driving to the hotel, but in the background plays an ominous sound. When I was watching this scene, I noticed as the car got closer to the hotel, the music had a deep beat drop EVERY SECOND. I wanted to be sure, so I timed it and watched the second change with every drop. The sound mocks a ticking clock; it represents that the closer they get to the hotel, the more time gets cut. It seems as if it is a time bomb. After, the movie cuts to a different scene of Jack Torrance walking into the hotel to form an opinion on his upcoming job. Yet, the scene isn’t as simple as it seems; when taking a closer look, you will notice there is a distinctive set of colors. The room is full of warm colors such as orange, goldish yellow, and burgundy. Orange is a color that implies warmth, enthusiasm, energy, freshness, and a new start. Gold yellow shows wealth, joy, optimism, and influence. Then burgundy means ambition, intensity, reserved, timid, and most of all, power. This isn’t known as of now in the movie, but the hotel feeds off of energy. So the hotel presents this warm atmosphere to hunt and pursue Jack’s energy in return. Somehow the movie still digs deeper; the scene could represent how one can put so much effort and hard work into something, for it to betray you, kill you, let you down, or just feed off your energy. The movie is not even 10 minutes in, and we have already experienced beautiful music choice, color theory, and deeper meanings throughout the movie. Stanley Kubrick truly meant it when he said, “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

As Jack is in the hotel running through the arrangements, they cut back home where they show Danny and his mother. If you look at the two scenes, you can see the drastic difference in the color and ambiance. In this clip, the setting becomes bright; there is a white wall, red and white tablecloth, and red and blue clothing. White is a color that means purity, honesty, balance, and cleanliness. Red signifies sacrifice, danger, and courage, while red and white together mean trust, truth, and love. In addition, blue symbolizes peace, confidence, and achievement. Blue also has a different connotation if it’s worn; if blue is worn, it means the person is considered dependable, trustworthy, and has a loyal structure. The scene involves Danny questioning how serious his family is about staying in the hotel for the winter. It seems like he is not excited, but he has no say. As the mom realizes Danny isn’t happy, she asks his imaginary friend Tony how he felt about the hotel. Tony said he didn’t want to go. When the mother asked why he didn’t want to go, he just repeated the statement, “I don’t want to go.” This is interesting because it seems as if Danny or Tony felt the danger. Not only did Danny question the hotel, but his imaginary friend did as well.

This is an interesting scene because it shows Danny and his imaginary friend feeling in danger. Not only did both of them say they didn’t want to go, but everything around them adds to the story as well. The red worn by Danny and his mother shows they are both in danger. Then there is also blue worn by the mother, showing that she is trustworthy and peaceful. This could be far-fetched, but I love movies and I believe they were trying to say you should always trust your intuition and your child. Fun fact: babies are born with fully developed survival instincts; therefore, no matter how young you are, you can have an intuition of what will happen and want to survive. Of course, the parents didn’t do anything because, “He’s only a child.” This is a common thing in most households; the movie even calls even more attention to this. A doctor comes to check on Danny and says he is okay without fully evaluating him. She says it’s normal because, “All kids have imaginary friends” and get overwhelmed. This is a display of how most adults don’t take kids seriously or the events they go through. The doctor also says kids can scare you to death, as if what they say holds no weight.

After checking on Danny, the doctor asked his mother about his past situations. The doctor asked what Danny’s first interaction with his imaginary friend was. The mother says it started with him being out of school for his injury. However, this was not a common injury or a coincidence; his father was the cause of it. This stuck out to me due to the fact most kids get imaginary friends when they don’t have others to talk to or feel lonely and powerless. This was a situation that the movie chose to shed light on, but it wasn’t useless; this also showed the audience what type of man Jack is.

The scene ends with Danny’s mom saying Jack has been sober for 5 months and a black screen that says closing day. A very interesting way to close a scene, in my opinion; it seems as if they wanted to make the audience think and remember the last line Danny’s mother said. The next scene cuts to the family driving; you can tell Jack isn’t in a cheerful mood. He appears to be annoyed with his family because in all of his scenes by himself he has been okay. Danny starts to say he is hungry, and all Jack says is he should’ve eaten his breakfast when they were home. In contrast to his mother comforting him, telling him he will eat when they arrive at the hotel and overall being caring. An important factor because it shows how the family is not happy together and they are better apart.

Arriving at the hotel and checking in was pretty normal for the first minute, then they started to get a tour. As the tour went on, they made it to the kitchen where the chef was; his name was Dick, and he was African American. As Danny and his mother see the kitchen, that’s where they want to check out the most, due to little Danny not eating his breakfast. Dick is showing them around and conversing with Wendy, yet that is not all. In the middle of the conversation, Dick speaks to Danny through his mind. This is when the shining is first introduced; Dick tells him he shines and only some can do it. The shining is influenced by alcoholism, mismanagement, temper, frustration, isolation, and abusive parental care. So with that being said, it’s not far-fetched to say they casted the only other person with the shining to be a black man by accident. Let’s ponder that thought; during the time the shining was being written (1974), black men especially were being abused, killed, and more. Therefore, he more than likely has been through many events to bless him with the shine. When Wendy leaves Danny and Dick alone, Dick tells him the reason he’s scared of the hotel is that bad things can leave a trace of itself. The connotation behind this is that bad events can leave energy that others don’t notice, but people with the shining can. The reason their intuition is advanced is because of the situations they have been in the past, and it protects them.

When the time jumps a month later, it shows Jack and Wendy conversing. It doesn’t seem that Jack enjoys talking to her. EVER. Wendy even asks Jack if he wants to take a walk together, yet he tells her no because he needs to work on his writing. Now if you haven’t seen the movie, he didn’t say this kindly; he was very snarky, sarcastic, and irritated. The scene then fades to his typewriter staying blank and him throwing a ball. This is a great clip that shows what type of father and husband Jack is. Jack always says he’s not around his family because of work, but honestly he just doesn’t want to be around them. In every scene with Jack and his family, he looks unhappy and as if he doesn’t want to be there. However, the next morning Wendy is in the kitchen cooking while the news is playing. The story was about a wife missing for 10 days after hunting with her husband. Literally warning her of danger, without her thinking about it twice. After the warnings, Wendy goes up to Jack’s writing room to check up on him. He seems concentrated before she comes in, but when she starts talking to him, his demeanor changes. As she tries to be kind and caring, the more vexed he becomes. This segment describes the realism of being in an unhappy marriage. Jack is a normal husband that doesn’t want to be with his wife. Even if the couple isn’t married, it’s common to get mad at your partner when you are tired of them.

A couple of minutes go by in the movie, and you see Danny asking his mom to go get a toy. She is constantly telling him no due to his father being asleep; however, Danny eventually convinces Wendy to let him get the toy. When Danny arrives in the room, Jack is already sitting up on the bed as if he has been up. That’s fishy. Wendy is under the impression that he is asleep. Why? Well, I’ll tell you: Jack will do anything to be away from his family. It seems like when he is around them, he wigs out (becomes unhinged/triggered). After some time, Danny gets hurt and Wendy blames Jack, which isn’t unbelievable because he has hurt Danny before, despite the fact he didn’t hurt him this time. With these false allegations, it pushes Jack to his limits. He goes to the gold ballroom for some alone time, but because he has been so isolated, that is not what happened. Jack has started to actually go crazy and imagine a bartender with tons of alcoholic drinks. As Jack starts to “drink”, they start small talk and say, “Here’s to five miserable months down the wagon”. This is a clean piece of dialogue to illustrate how Jack “needs” some type of “fix” to handle spending time with his family. While talking about how much he dislikes his family, Jack also says he will never lay a hand on Danny. Now I know I’ve said a lot about Jack being a horrible person from the jump. Nonetheless, I don’t think he would lay a finger on Danny if he is in his right mind. Jack has no reason to lie right now, even though we see the bartender in reality, this is all his imagination and thoughts. This is a cool aspect that they put in the movie. Jack truly doesn’t want to harm Danny; except, the longer he isolates himself and drowns in his thoughts, the more his TRUE evil thoughts get heightened.

As time is ticking in the movie and things become more intense, something amusing happens. Dick the chef calls up to the hotel so he can check on Danny. None of the calls go through because the blizzard messed up the phone lines. As things go by, Dick comes to the conclusion he will catch a flight because he knows something shady. The movie then shows Jack in the midst of losing his mind. He is quite literally imagining a party in this empty hotel. Remember that these conversations he’s having are not really with a bartender; he is talking to himself. This is an auditory hallucination and it can be caused by lack of sleep, stress, and isolation. All of which Jack has; therefore, the people he is imagining are just his thoughts. With that being said, Jack holds a conversation with one of the bartenders and you can tell something is off from his body language and tone of voice. Though their conversation did give even deeper hints about the movie’s true meaning in my perspective. Lloyd the bartender gives Jack a free drink and tells him to drink up. Now I know that may be a regular sentence for a bartender, but without a question, this has a deeper context and we will find out why later.

Yet, for now we are not there. We are at the part when a different server spills drinks all over Jack and takes him to the bathroom. The bathroom is where the danger truly starts and the set itself says it all. The room itself is yelling danger; to begin with, the walls are painted bright red, with very bright lights on the wall next to a mirror. We all know red is a color that represents danger, but that is not the only factor pointing out the obvious. There are also very bright lights with a mirror directly on the other side. This has to be a depiction of Jack himself being the danger. I mean, think about it, Jack is the “Bad guy”, he is the man that goes crazy and tries to kill his family. So why wouldn’t the talented Stanley Kubrick want to make a deeper reference? Some may think it’s a bizarre coincidence, even though shooting a movie with many mirrors in one room is not an easy job, especially for a movie in 1980. “So coincidence, I think not”.

To add more to my point that none of this is a coincidence, right after the bathroom scene, all hell breaks loose. You see Wendy stressing about getting Danny out of the hotel without knowing the real urgency of the situation. As Wendy goes looking for Jack in fear, she stumbles upon his pages of the book that are complete. Until she notices this is not for a book, or anything. It’s written proof of Jack losing his mind, it was about three hundred pages worth of him repeating, “All work no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Meaning without time off from work, a person becomes both bored and boring. Although instead, he became crazy and manic. Soon after, Wendy gets caught due to her janky snooping skills. Jack ends up going off about why they can’t leave the hotel, basically yapping about himself and his own needs. Eventually, he pushes Wendy to her limits, making her knock him out with a bat and locking him in the freezer. She walks away from the freezer with the main priority of saving her son and getting him checked out by a doctor. Until she realizes that job won’t be as easy thanks to Jack cutting the wires on the snow plower and radio. Further in time, Jack ends up getting out of the freezer and Danny feels the hazard coming. He starts to tweak out and repeat redrum (murder backwards for the dummies) and it starts off as a whisper as he gently writes it on the door with a red crayon. Then soon after he starts to yell it loud enough to wake up his mother and notice what it meant. Right when Wendy wakes up you see Jack breaking down the door with an ax. Wendy takes Danny to the bathroom and locks the door, luckily she was able to get Danny out the window and out of the house. Though she was still stuck. He starts to break down the bathroom door as she screams obnoxiously, but right before he gets in, he stops.

He didn’t stop out of love, compassion, or common sense. He stopped because he heard Dick pulling up to the hotel. Dick was quickly found by Jack and killed. Pretty anticlimactic if you asked me, wasn’t much of a fight or scare. However, you win some, you lose some. Thereafter he goes chasing after Danny, though he cannot find him because my boy Danny is too smart and makes fake footprints in the snow. This leads Jack to freezing alive, due to the low temperatures. Overall that’s how the movie ended.

As I said in the beginning, Stanley Kubrick does not waste any time and knows how to make a movie. From the opening scene, the movie had a great soundtrack to set the tone, wonderful costumes that added to the actors’ character, and no seconds were wasted. Then that was only the beginning. Throughout the movie, the plot and conflict started to thicken and feed into a deeper meaning. This movie has always touched my heart because I’ve never seen a horror movie play into a deeper meaning so well. With all this information I’ve provided, I think you know what this movie rating is. It is a 5. If you don’t agree, I can’t understand why and honestly never will. So I hope you enjoyed it. Goodbye.