The True Horror of The Shining

When a haunted hotel is the least of your concerns

When I was five years old, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, my parents let me watch The Shining.

This wasn’t done intentionally. It’s not like they sat me down and said “Hey, we know you’re mostly into Ninja Turtles, but we think this could be right up your alley.” It was just on TV one evening and they left it playing while I was in the living room.

I don’t know if this is the point in the movie where they tuned in, or if it’s just where my memory activated, but my first recollection of the film is watching young Danny Torrance shuffle across the bedroom while chanting “Redrum” over and over, scrawling it on the bathroom door right before Jack Nicholson breaks in with an axe. So yeah, I didn’t exactly get a chance to ease into the more intense aspects of the film.

I know I watched until the end because that image of Jack Nicholson frozen in ice is burned into my brain. It’s what I saw in my nightmares that night, right before I woke up screaming. I had to sleep in my parents’ room for a few nights after, and they realized they should probably keep a closer eye on what I watched on TV.

What’s so striking about this experience is that I had absolutely no context as to what this movie was about or what was going on, and yet it still disturbed me on a primal level. I didn’t need to know the plot or the characters’ relationship to each other. The images and sounds coming from the TV were more than enough to unsettle me in a way I can still viscerally feel today.

This is a testament to Stanley Kubrick, a true filmmaking genius who operated at a level that was head and shoulders above his peers. I believe Kubrick was unparalleled in his ability to put images on a screen that would affect the viewer in ways they weren’t aware of. A lot of directors appeal to a viewer’s conscious mind, stimulating their intellect or desire to be entertained. Kubrick, on the other hand, aims straight for the subconscious.

What is he subconsciously trying to get at in The Shining? There are a lot of theories out there. Most of them are covered in the documentary Room 237. Maybe the entire movie is an allegory for the genocide of the Native Americans. Maybe it’s Kubrick’s coded confession that he helped fake the moon landing. Maybe it’s actually meant to be watched in reverse. All of these are possible (Including the moon landing one. I didn’t believe it at first, but then I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, realized it came out almost 10 years before Star Wars, and walked away thinking “Ok, there’s a non-zero chance Kubrick did that shit.”), but I think there’s something else going on here. I believe it’s something that’s deeply personal to Kubrick and, apt for a man obsessed with the subconscious, it begins with Sigmund Freud.

Kubrick is on record stating that during the writing process for The Shining, both he and his co-writer Diane Johnson were influenced by Freud’s 1919 essay “The Uncanny.” According to Freud, the uncanny comes from encountering a person or situation that feels comfortable and familiar on the surface, but a closer inspection reveals something that is not quite right. Examples include doubles and doppelgängers, inanimate objects with a life of their own, and broken spatial perception. All of these elements are present in The Shining, but they’re small potatoes compared to the insidious dynamic at play within the Torrance family.

This being Freud, the psychodrama of the family unit might be the ultimate instance of the uncanny. After all, what’s more uncanny than a seemingly happy family being the battleground for Oedipal and castration complexes? In Freud’s world, the Norman Rockwell painting on the surface obscures the angst and terror that lives below. Because of this dynamic, every family dinner has the potential to devolve into the uncanny.

I feel compelled to say that I don’t necessarily agree with this worldview. In fact, I kind of hate Freud. I find his theories to be too simplistic and, quite frankly, juvenile. I’m more of a Carl Jung guy. But Freud is beyond influential and his ideas must be contended with. You have to work through them to end up at something resembling a redeeming truth, and Kubrick forces you to walk that path in The Shining via the Torrances. Like the hedge maze at the end of the film, you need to run straight into the darkness if you’re going to make it out the other side safely.

What do we know about Jack Torrance, the father figure we meet after the opening credits finish rolling? It’s never explicitly stated, but if you read between the lines you can tell that the guy is a massive loser. When asked what he does for a living, Torrance replies “Formerly a schoolteacher. I’m a writer. Teaching has been more or less a way of making ends meet.” That’s all well and good. I’m certainly no stranger to pursuing an artistic dream while working a job to pay the bills. But when you scratch below the surface, you find out Jack’s not much of a writer either.

“I’m outlining a new writing project and five months of peace is just what I want,” Torrance says when asked what appeals to him about living in a secluded mountain hotel for the winter. But once he actually gets behind the typewriter, his creative output is minimal.

Wendy, his poor wife, does her best to encourage him. “Any ideas yet?” she asks him one morning, when he’s still in bed at 11:30am.

“Lots of ideas. No good ones,” he replies.

“Well, something will come. It’s just a matter of settling back into the habit of writing every day.”

“Yep, that’s all it is,” he says, with a poorly concealed look of contempt.

The mask comes off and things start to boil over when Wendy approaches him at his desk one evening, asking if he got a lot written that day.

His temper escalating with every word, Jack tells her:

“Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you’re breaking my concentration. You’re distracting me, and it will then take me time to get back to where I was! Understand?

We’re going to make a new rule. Whenever I’m in here and you hear me typing or whether you don’t hear me typing, whatever the FUCK you hear me doing in here, when I’m in here, that means that I am working. That means don’t come in. Now, do you think you can handle that? Fine. Now why don’t you start right now and get the fuck out of here?”

You might think these outbursts are caused by the hotel driving him mad. But this attitude was already present before the Torrances arrived. Watch this scene as the family drives to the hotel at the beginning of the film.

Listen to the “Mh-hm” and “Yes” he gives Wendy and Danny when they address him. It’s the sound of every exasperated father nearing the end of his rope. Except this isn’t Jack at the end of a long and trying day. It’s his default setting. He’s ready to murder them before he ever sets foot on haunted soil. This is a man who hates his family.

But, of course, he doesn’t really hate his family does he? He hates himself for his failure as an artist, but he’s unable or unwilling to confront that directly. Danny and Wendy are merely the people closest to him, and therefore the easiest targets for his displaced feelings. It’s so much easier to take things out on an innocent woman and child than to have a frank and honest conversation with yourself about your shortcomings. I’ve had to do it, and it’s not pleasant.

This, to me, is the crux of the entire movie, and the driving force for Kubrick’s vision. I believe The Shining is a self-portrait of Kubrick in his imagined worst case scenario.

Stanley Kubrick wasn’t exactly known for being a chill director. He forced actors to do dozens, sometimes hundreds of takes for seemingly no reason at all. He spent years doing research before starting a film. He developed complex technical specifications for the cameras and lighting he wanted to use. This is a guy who convinced NASA to let him borrow the camera lenses they used to photograph the dark side of the moon so he could shoot scenes in Barry Lyndon entirely by candlelight. He had an exacting vision and he would go to obscene lengths to realize it.

He was also a husband and a father who lived in a secluded country manor with his family.

Kubrick was not a failure the way Jack Torrance is. Far from it. But what if he was? What if he had the same drive for success, the same passionate desire for artistic expression, but was hampered by failure and the needs of his wife and children? How would that make him feel? How would it make him feel about himself, and more importantly, how would it make him feel about his family? The Shining is Kubrick’s answer to that question, and the answer is terrifying.

I understand I might be reaching here. But there’s one element of the film that makes me believe I might be on to something. It’s the fact that Kubrick goes to great lengths to make Jack Torrance sympathetic, and tries his hardest to make Wendy and Danny come across as unbelievably annoying.

The importance of casting Jack Nicholson in this role cannot be overstated. He’s one of the most, if not the most, charismatic and likable actors of all time. Whenever he shows up on your screen, you’re happy to see him. This is especially true when he plays a villain, like The Joker in Batman or Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. And because most people want to be Jack Nicholson, they’re always willing to put themselves in his characters’ shoes.

Everyone in the movie aside from Jack (Notice how the actor and character have the same name? Another bit of alignment by Kubrick, as well as a nod to the doppelgänger concept) speaks in this sort of corny, stilted, Leave It To Beaver tone of voice. They all sound like a 1950s Betty Crocker commercial. Jack mirrors their speech patterns out of obligation at the beginning of the film, but you can see the struggle and angst behind his eyes. He’s uncomfortable and bothered by the world around him, as are we. We empathize with him so much that when he finally unloads on Wendy and her “Golly gee” nonsense, we’re practically cheering him on. Kubrick has put us in the shoes of the domestic abuser.

Critics have previously noted how obnoxious Wendy is throughout the film. A couple examples include:

“Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.” - Variety - 1979.

“Shelley Duvall is just so whiny and dense as increasingly unstable Jack Torrance’s wife that it makes it nearly impossible not to root for him to turn her into a lampshade for the hotel lobby. Her high-pitched speaking voice and shrieks just add fuel to our rage.” - Complex.com – 2012.

I believe this was completely intentional. Kubrick terrorized Shelley Duvall on set, giving her contradicting directions and driving her to the point of exhaustion. This was all done in service of how he wanted Wendy to come across on screen. Kubrick wants us to hate Wendy and empathize with Jack. This forces us to acknowledge our own dark impulses, to remind us that we’re not necessarily above the behavior we’re seeing Jack exhibit on screen. If we can be seduced by a few scenes in a movie, how different are we really from this monster terrorizing his family?

Kubrick’s approach works. Because Nicholson is so effortlessly cool and Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy is so grating, we’re practically rooting for him in the below scene. I know any time I stumble across it on TV, I can’t help but laugh when he coyly asks Wendy “What are you doing down here?” My wife, on the other hand, doesn’t find this nearly as funny.

Kubrick is admitting to something major here. Much like the Overlook itself, he knows there is a deep, ugly darkness that resides within him. If he wasn’t able to be Stanley Kubrick, if he was just some failure getting nagged by his wife and children, he’d absolutely lose his mind. Why else would he pick this novel to adapt into a movie and make these incredibly specific choices with it? He wants to get those feelings out into the light and, in turn, force us to admit our own potential for darkness.

It’s a bold and daring choice. In my opinion, Kubrick unquestionably succeeds. The real question, though, is what comes next? Kubrick has forced us to acknowledge our darkness, but what do we do with that darkness once we’ve acknowledged it? Is there any kind of opportunity to overcome and transcend it? This is where we bump up against the limits of Freud and The Shining itself, and need to explore outside sources to find the answer.

The answer for me, personally, can be found in 2019’s Doctor Sleep, written and directed by Mike Flanagan. This movie is a direct sequel to The Shining, featuring Ewan McGregor as a middle-aged Danny Torrance protecting a young psychic girl from energy vampires that want to murder her and steal her powers (The plot is slightly more complicated than that of its predecessor). Towards the end of the film, Danny brings the girl to the abandoned Overlook Hotel, attempting to use it as a Home Alone-style booby trap against their enemies. It’s here where Danny walks into the grand ballroom and finds himself face to face with the ghostly bartender. He calls himself Lloyd, but we know who it really is: Jack Torrance.

A lesser director would have used a digitally de-aged Jack Nicholson in this scene. Flanagan instead picks an actor (In this case Henry Thomas, aka Elliot from E.T.) who mostly resembles Nicholson in appearance and demeanor. There are enough similarities and enough differences (Flanagan’s own use of a doppelgänger!) to telegraph the intention while still making the experience uncanny. It’s a masterful stroke by a talented auteur.

The most unsettling part of this scene is the monologue that Jack gives at the end. It’s essentially an explanation for why he drank and tried to kill his family.

“A man tries. He provides. But he’s surrounded by mouths. A family. A wife. A kid. Those mouths eat time. They eat your days on earth. They just gobble them up. It’s enough to make a man sick. And this [drink] is the medicine. So tell me pup, are you going to take your medicine?”

It freaks me out how much I relate to “Jack” in this scene, with this specific line of thinking. I’ve been married for five years, and a father for almost three months. I’ll admit there have been times, especially recently, where I’ve felt put upon, like my sense of agency and control were being ripped from my hands. In my weaker moments, I’ve even felt pangs of resentment. If only I had more free time to write, or read, or work out, or sleep or just go for a simple goddamn walk to clear my head. How much better off I would be! But this is a trap, one that you have to resist with all of your soul.

Danny eventually responds to Jack’s “Are you going to take your medicine?” question. He nervously but decisively says, “I’m not.” It’s a response that appears simple on the surface, but is belied by years of hard work and personal reflection.

At the beginning of the film, Danny is a chronic alcoholic who is haunted by his past and the literal ghosts he sees around every corner. He eventually works his way through the 12-Step program and finds peace as a hospital orderly, helping terminally ill patients transition from the world of the living to the afterlife. He has confronted the worst parts of himself and safely integrated them into his psychic life. That’s what allows him to tell his father “No” when he offers him a drink, sitting on the exact same barstool from 40 years ago.

This specific example is why I prefer Jung to Freud. Freud stops at acknowledgment, Jung is more focused on overcoming and integrating. I don’t believe your problems are meant to be your problems forever. They’re meant to be defeated. To merely acknowledge or name something is only the first step. I believe it is possible to take that problem and become aware of it on a meta-level, to see where it affects you in the rest of your life and get it under control. You keep it at arm’s length, close enough to see and understand it but far enough away where it doesn’t control you. From there, you can make decisions that stop you from following its dark path.

I didn’t fully understand the concept of “Integrating your Shadow” until I watched this scene from Doctor Sleep. Only by recognizing my own potential for anger and resentment did I rob it of its power and allow myself to keep it close without being corrupted by it. So now, whenever I feel that resentment over lost time bubbling up, whenever I identify with Jack pouring drinks behind the bar or sitting angrily at his typewriter, I remind myself of where that road leads and I choose an alternate path. Like adult Danny, I consciously decide “I’m not” even though I know I easily could. Being able to wrap my mind around that has been transformative for me as a husband and as a father. I have to remind myself of it frequently, but I know it’s an option. And I have Kubrick’s interior bravery and meticulous cinematic execution to thank for that. Doctor Sleep closed the loop, but The Shining illuminated the path and got me started. It showed me who I might be if I didn’t humble myself, and quickly.

I obviously had no idea all of this was going on in The Shining when I first saw it at five years old. The surface level uncanny elements were what terrified my still developing mind. But through age, experience and reflection, I was eventually able to see what the movie was truly pointing to, and how horrifying that reality is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to close my laptop and go hang out with my infant son. You know what they say about all work and no play…