The Shining (movie)

The Shining is a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1980. It is based on Stephen King's novel The Shining.

Plot
Jack Torrance arrives at the Overlook Hotel in Sidewinder, Colorado, interviewing for the position of winter caretaker, planning to use the hotel's solitude to write. The hotel, built on the site of a Native American burial ground, becomes snowed-in during the winter; it is closed from November to May. Manager Stuart Ullman warns Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, developed cabin fever and killed his family and himself. In Boulder, Jack's son, Danny, has a terrifying premonition about the hotel, viewing a cascade of blood emerging from an elevator door. Jack's wife, Wendy, tells a doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend named Tony and that Jack has given up drinking because he hurt Danny's arm following a binge.

The family arrives at the hotel on closing day and is given a tour. The chef, Dick Hallorann, surprises Danny by telepathically offering him ice cream. To Danny, Dick explains that he and his grandmother shared this telepathic ability, which he calls "shining". Danny asks if there is anything to be afraid of in the hotel, particularly room 237. Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel has a "shine" to it along with many memories, not all of which are good. He also tells Danny to stay out of room 237. A month passes; while Jack's writing goes nowhere, Danny and Wendy explore the hotel's hedge maze. Wendy becomes concerned about the phone lines being out due to the heavy snowfall and Danny has frightening visions. Jack, increasingly frustrated, starts acting strangely and becomes prone to violent outbursts.

Danny's curiosity about room 237 overcomes him when he sees the room's door open. Later, Wendy finds Jack, asleep at his typewriter, screaming in his sleep. After she awakens him, Jack says he dreamed that he killed her and Danny. Danny arrives with a bruise on his neck and traumatized, causing Wendy to accuse Jack of abusing him. Jack wanders into the hotel's Gold Room and meets a ghostly bartender named Lloyd. Lloyd serves him bourbon while Jack complains about his marriage.

Wendy later tells Jack that Danny told her a "crazy woman in one of the rooms" tried strangling him. Jack investigates room 237, encountering the ghost of a dead woman, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue over whether Danny should be removed from the hotel and a furious Jack returns to the Gold Room, filled with ghosts attending a ball. He meets the ghost of Grady who tells Jack that he must "correct" his wife and child and that Danny has reached out to Hallorann using his "talent". In Florida, Hallorann has a premonition that something is wrong at the hotel and flies back to Colorado. Danny starts calling out "redrum" and goes into a trance, referring to himself as "Tony".

While searching for Jack, Wendy discovers he has been typing pages of manuscript repeating "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". She is confronted by Jack, who threatens her before she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. She drags him into the kitchen and locks him in the pantry, but she and Danny are trapped at the hotel; Jack has sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat. Later, Jack converses through the pantry door with Grady, who unlocks the door.

Danny writes "REDRUM" on the outside of the bathroom door in the family's quarters. When Wendy sees this in the bedroom mirror, the letters spell out "MURDER". Jack begins hacking through the quarters' main door with a firefighter's axe. Wendy sends Danny through the bathroom window, but it will not open sufficiently for her to pass. Jack breaks through the bathroom door as Wendy screams in horror. He leers through the hole he made, shouting "Here's Johnny!", but backs off after Wendy slashes his hand with a butcher's knife.

Hearing the engine of the snowcat Hallorann borrowed to reach the hotel, Jack leaves the room. He kills Hallorann with the axe, and pursues Danny into the hedge maze. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering ghosts and the cascade of blood Danny envisioned in Boulder. Danny lays a false trail to mislead Jack, who is following his footprints. Wendy and Danny escape in Hallorann's snowcat, while Jack freezes to death in the maze.

In a photograph in the hotel hallway dated July 4, 1921, Jack Torrance smiles amid a crowd of party revelers.

Cast

 * Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance


 * Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance
 * Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance
 * Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann
 * Barry Nelson as Stuart Ullman
 * Philip Stone as Delbert Grady
 * Joe Turkel as Lloyd
 * Tony Burton as Larry Durkin
 * Lia Beldam as the Young Woman In Bath
 * Billie Gibson as Old Woman In Bath
 * Barry Dennen as Bill Watson
 * Lisa Burns as Grady Daughter #1
 * Louise Burns as Grady Daughter #2
 * Anne Jackson as Doctor

In the shorter European cut, all of the scenes involving Jackson and Burton are cut (although their names still appear in the credits). Dennen is on-screen in both versions of the film, albeit to a limited degree (and with no dialogue) in the shorter cut.

The actresses who played the Grady daughters, Lisa and Louise Burns, are identical twins; however, the characters in the book and film script are merely sisters, not twins. In the film's dialogue, Mr. Ullman identifies them as "about eight and ten". Nonetheless, they are frequently referred to in discussions about the film as "the Grady twins".

The resemblance in the staging of the Grady girls and the "Twins" photograph by Diane Arbus has been noted both by Arbus' biographer, Patricia Bosworth, and by numerous Kubrick critics. Although Kubrick both met Arbus personally and studied photography under her during his youthful days as photographer for Look magazine, Kubrick's widow says he did not deliberately model the Grady girls on Arbus' photograph, in spite of widespread attention to the resemblance.