Still Shining

Monday is movies. (Sometimes TV). Today it's about horror films (again) and The Shining in particular. It's about the fascination in, and of horror...

I’m up early watching The Horror Crowd, a documentary made in 2020. It’s not bad, an easy watch – a brief survey of the horror genre, mentioning some of the key films and tropes. But it’s just another documentary about horror movies. And I’ve seen a lot. It’s neither the best nor the worst, clearly not the first and it likely won’t be the last.

For the last few years, I’ve watched more horror films than any other genre. I’ve been watching horror films for over 30 years now – but I took a big break in the 2000s, because, as horror was rebooting, I found it hard to bother. So many of them felt like filler films. I’ve recently caught up with the entire Saw franchise, and I didn’t really need to do that. I’ve watched a few of the Final Destinations, I’m still just catching up with the Insidious franchise now (nearly there). And things like The Purge and then the grottier things like Human Centipede.

It feels very by-rote (sleep)walking through these. There are very few genuine chills, and scares.

When I first watched The Exorcist and The Omen and A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween and a few of the other ‘big’ name films, I was genuinely freaked; I watched them out of fear – sometimes watching thing through cracks between my fingers. I pretty much forced myself into the early horror films, and depending on how much you’ve read by me on this topic, you’ll know part of this story already.

When I was six or seven or eight, I watched Alligator. It’s a very hokey, post-Jaws shlocker, pretty much a comedy-horror (without remembering to be funny). It was Sunday Horror-type fare. And when we watched it, as a family, it filled me with fear. I went about the house for what felt like years after, but was likely months, putting the toilet lid down, closing the bathroom door. I was frightened to use the bathroom in houses I wasn’t overly familiar with, and the night we watched the film I had to sleep in my big brother’s bedroom, in his spare bed.

Once I got over the silliness of that fear – and that film – it’s really b-grade and not at all scary (but I was not only young, those were different times, there wasn’t a whole lot of stimuli in the early 1980s in clean, white Havelock North, it was a charmed and simple life) I decided to immerse myself in horror films. Starting, I think, with Elm Street and working through so many of the classics.

The first film that really freaked me out was A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 – because that was the first from that series I watched. That’s obviously where the franchise falls off its wheels and grinds along on the chassis. It’s hard to watch now – particularly in comparison to the three films that set it up. But that’s that sort of opinion that arrives on the back of watching too many horror films.

The reason to watch horror – I’ve perhaps only just realised – is to make it to the finish line. Not many movies from the genre end on a super grim note. There’s usually the validation of the hero surviving, of the hero-title being bestowed too. The troubled, bullied, or unlikely figure that not only survives, but is newly born. It’s not quite, It was all a dream – but it is very much The nightmare is over.

I’m so deep into horror now, and have been for a while, that the only films that have any sort of real impact on me are the ones that hit so hard because you keep thinking after. That’s a hard thing to achieve.

Nowadays, it’s called Heightened Horror – which is a pretentious label. It’s a way of having a hall pass. It’s essentially saying, I’m not really a horror fan, but if the film is also high/ish art, I’ll make an exception.

One of the things I love about horror is how “all-comers” it really is, how inclusive, and how absurd it can get. In that sense, the links between horror, heavy metal, pro-wrestling and comic books are all very clear. This is entertainment. There is art in there – always. There’s a craft. But it is about putting on a show, or selling an idea through art. Big, dumb, loud, fun art. But even big dumb art can be smart.

Many of the alleged heightened horror films, or elevated horror (that label is just as bad) are very good. I’m a fan of a lot of the post-Scream meta-ness within horror, and the best of the recent films, where they try to do something different (It Follows, Midsommar, Hereditary, The Witch) are high on my list of modern faves. Sure. But I also still love to sit down with Terror Train, or Re-Animator, or Friday The 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.

There’s a real calm and comfort in sitting down with a film you know so well, or a film that contains tropes, twists, and turns you know so well.

This weekend I popped on The Shining, late at night. This film has held me for close to 30 years. I might have seen it 20 times. I have seriously lost count, but it’s well into the double-figures.

I was 16 when I first saw it. And as soon as I started re-watching it this weekend, I transported myself back to that very first watch. Staying at a friend’s place. His folks were out. We had the house to ourselves. We were excited to be finally seeing The Shining, a film that we’d built up in our minds. Stephen King fever was raging, and we’d watched the It mini-series and the new movies of that time like Pet Sematary and Sleepwalkers and Misery, and though I hadn’t read The Shining (that wouldn’t happen until a couple of years ago), I had been reading lots of the books as well as watching the films.

We settled in to watch The Shining. It was instantly a mood. That music, the off-kilter way Stanley Kubrick puts you at unease – the isolation within the film. And of course: Lights off, two teenagers in a bedroom with no one else in the house; in my case it wasn’t even my home.

We got ourselves into a state. Which is what we wanted.

And when we made it to the finish line, there was barely a redemption. Just a world that had been smashed to pieces. The internal horror lurking. The characters held prisoner by their torment. So much so that King would eventually return to the character of Danny Torrance and write a sequel (Doctor Sleep) to imagine where a grown-up Danny fits into the world.

The first time I watched The Shining I had to get my friend to stand outside the bathroom straight after. He had to get me to walk with him to the kitchen so he could get a drink, and check the front door was locked before we tried to get to sleep. We talked for an hour or so about all sorts of nonsense. And then we drifted off. And a week later I was watching the film again. This time I was ready to bask in it fully. This time I wasn’t at all scared.

My relationship with the film keeps changing, which is why I head back to it so often.

I can view it as a Kubrick film. I can view it for Jack Nicholson’s performance. In recent years, I’ve watched it more for the character of Wendy, and Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of her. I definitely watch it and think about King’s frustrations with this filmed version of his work, and what it left out. I love that Kubrick took the book as a starting point, then stripped out so much of the backstory to leave the bare bones of existential dread.

One time, a few years ago, I was up late watching it alone, and I felt the fear all over again. The music – particularly – got to me. The eeriness of that, and some of Kubrick’s creepiest shots.

But the other night, I just watched it for pure and total enjoyment. I watched it as if I was catching up with an old friend. No fear. And purely nostalgia I guess.

Something new occurred to me though – something I’ve likely thought of before, but couldn’t quite remember ever articulating: Stephen King stories don’t generally feature big body counts. And this is their chief strength within horror. Obviously, there’s the backstory he carves, the characters he creates – and makes you care about – there’s humour, there’s heart, there’s everything else, but the scariest thing he makes is a world where the body-count stays low. That’s the reality he keeps.

So many horror films these days are obsessed with Kill Counts and big, inventive kills – and hey, right time, right place, I love that shit too. I really do. But that’s the candyfloss version of horror.

The Shining is a big banquet of feels.

And as I watched it on Saturday night/Sunday morning, I felt very calm, and in fact found the film calming. The movie is its own world. Entering into it now is like a meditation for me. The eeriness is now a version of serenity.

Analyse that, however you like, but I guess all I’m trying to say is the fascination still holds. And watching documentaries like The Horror Crowd helps to feed that fascination.