The Shining Review

The horror here is spatial. Garrett Brown's Steadicam glides inches above the carpet behind Danny's tricycle, and the cut between carpet and hardwood does more for tension than any effect, because the hotel's geometry keeps failing quiet consistency checks: a window in an interior office, a corridor that should not reach that far, a ballroom that appears only when someone needs a drink. John Alcott lights everything with practical sources and daylight through impossible windows, so the Overlook feels overexposed rather than gloomy, which is far worse.

Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind's score, spliced with Ligeti and Penderecki, treats sound as pressure. Shelley Duvall's performance has been unfairly maligned; her terror is raw and unglamorous in a way few actors risk. The film's actual weakness is Nicholson, who arrives at the job interview already visibly deranged, which flattens the arc into a countdown. The plot is deliberately unresolved and the ambiguity is the point, but the escalation curve is broken from the first scene.