The Shining (1980)

How many "Scariest Movie of All Time" lists have been made since the beginning of the Horror picture? Quite a bit, no? Chances are more than a few titles on those lists are adaptations of Stephen King books and, I'm also willing to bet that The Shining is right up there.

By now, it's pretty well known that Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 novel about a haunted hotel taking its toll on a broken man differs greatly from its source material. Sure, it's not a page by page recreation of King's work, but Kubrick succeeds in making The Shining completely his own.

In case you're not familiar with the story, Jack Torrence (in a tailor-made performance by Jack Nicholson), a writer with an hopelss affinity for the bottle, is hired to be caretaker during the winter months at the Overlook Hotel. To keep him company, Jack brings along his mousey wife Wendy and their borderline autistic son, Danny. Almost immediately, strange things start to happen and it's quite apparent that the Overlook Hotel has some skeletons in its ballroom (the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady, killed his family and then himself).

The Shining is more than just a mere Horror movie; it's an exercise is fear and almost like watching a nightmare. Even if you've read King's novel, although you may see traces of its plot devices in Kubrick's film, it's still unclear what exactly is going on. In fact, the stedicam shots of Danny tearing through the Overlook on his big wheel are even terrifying!

Many could argue that Kubrick's film is a series of surreal images, strung together with the loose twine of Stephen King's novel. Kubrick uses static shots (or at least shots with very little to no movement) as he crafts some of the most memorable bits of The Shining: Jack, sporting an early beard and a black turtleneck as he stares at Wendy and Danny playing in the snow, the Grady twins in the hallway, and of course, the blood coming out of the elevator. It's as if Kubrick was trying to conjure up childhood nightmares as he made the picture!

At the end of the day, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, though flawed in the eyes of many (including King himself, who wrote the 1997 Mick Garris-directed ABC mini-series remake), stands on its own as a seminal masterpiece. Twenty-seven years after the fact, it still holds up as one scary as hell motion picture! See it!