Halloween is almost here! For the next couple of articles, we are going to take a look at some of the best horrors/thrillers that came out in the past few decades. Our first horror film is The Shining.

It is the winter season, and the Overlook Hotel is being temporarily closed. Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic, is hired to be the caretaker of the hotel during this time.

The catch is that the last man who served as the caretaker ended up going insane and ax-murdered his whole family.

Despite this, Jack takes his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, out to the hotel, hoping to get some writing done during his stay. Anything they could ever need is at the hotel, including a variety of food, television, and dozens of rooms to sit it. T

he only thing they lack is interaction with the outside world. No one but them are in the hotel, and with the phones lines down, their contact is strictly limited

Jack also has a rocky relationship with Danny. One night, when he was a drunk, Jack abused his son, causing a highly unstable relationship. Even hugging him causes distress for Danny.

Danny is also dealing with problems of his own. He claims to have a best friend named Tony, who is actually his alter- ego. “Tony” does not want to be in the hotel, and Danny keeps seeing visions of a river of blood surging through a hallway, as well as a pair of girls, who we can assume to be ghosts that haunt the hotel.

The only person that understands Danny is Dick Hallorann, the hotel’s head chef, who has a conversation with him before leaving them alone at the hotel. He has the same telepathic abilities as Danny, which he refers to as “Shining.” He mentions that the hotel has a “Shine” of its own, and warns Danny of the dangers that lurk in the hotel, almost like Samuel L. Jackson’s character in '1408', another adapted Stephen King story.

The more that he stays in the hotel, the more Jack sinks into his own state of madness. He keeps seeing people all around the building, as if the hotel was populated. Despite him losing his mind, everyone around him acts as if his behavior is normal. We don’t know whether these scenes are in Jack’s own head, or whether they are actually ghosts.

The film stretches on for almost two hours, all leading up to Jack chasing his wife and son with an axe. Then comes the famous “Heeerre’s JOHNNY!” scene, which has remained the film’s most recognizable scene.

After chasing Danny through a snow-filled maze in the middle of the night, the film comes to one of the most confusing and hotly debated endings, but hey, you would have to see the whole film first before you can develop your own opinion.

The Shining is “based” on the Stephen King novel of the same name. The term “based" should be used loosely, because this film is almost completely different from the book. Kubrick was well known for taking a different approach with an author’s book, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket.

The characters are changed for the most part. Jack Torrance, who was more authoritative and well meaning, is portrayed as a much more menacing human being.

Wendy, who was a self-reliant person in the novel, is passive and panic-stricken (Kubrick cut many of her lines due to Shelly’ Duvall’s delivery).

Danny keeps his abilities more of a secret in the film than he does in the book. Perhaps Kubrick did most of this to make the atmosphere speak more than the characters?

The list goes on and one with how much was changed, but it is astonishing nonetheless. If you think that Walt Disney films are inaccurate to their source material, The Shining takes the cake, and redecorates it.

Jack Nicholson, as usual, steals the show as Jack Torrance. You can really believe that Nicholson is a recovering alcoholic, and you can see him naturally getting crazier as time passes.

Why is it that Jack Nicholson is so good at playing insane characters? Nicholson is one of the main features that made this film memorable, and it's a shame that he wasn’t nominated.

Shelly Duvall plays the character of Wendy. One of the most notorious stories behind the scenes involved her getting into real heated arguments with Stanley Kubrick.

He would make her do her takes over and over again to the point of exhaustion.  At moments in the film her screaming and “scared” faces are effective, but she does too much, even for a horror movie.

The film also has an unusual tone. At times it plays like a drama- slasher- horror film, altogether in one. At the same time though, The Shining does not have a genre, and instead, is a genre of it’s own. It is no surprise that not many films have tried to copy this film’s style. That’s Kubrick for you.

The film has a slow pace throughout the first half, but there is an uncomfortable feeling, buried within the scenes that build along as time that passes. So when the madness of Jack starts to fully kick in, so does the film.

What makes The Shining work so well is the isolated tone of the atmosphere. The film did not need a barrage of special effects or gruesome deaths (there are only two or three).

It instead uses the hotel, the actors, and everything surrounding it. There are many fast-zoom shots as well as jump cuts, which, accompanied by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s disjointed soundtrack, help make these scenes memorably scary.

As one could imagine, The Shining had a major impact on both cinema and audiences. At the time of its release, reviews of the film were relatively poor. However, if you would ask anyone about this film today, they would not even know where to begin.

People who have seen the film have thought about it to death, trying to figure out various aspects of it. Why can the chef “shine”? Why was there a man in a bear suit performing fellatio on another man (a part of the novel that Kubrick kept in). As long as there are no answers to these questions, the film retains its power.