Stanley Kubrick’s classic adaptation of Stephen King’s ghost story is now on general re-release in its US version, which runs 24 minutes longer than its later European counterpart, after the director took it back into the editing suite. Whether the film benefits from the additional material is open to question, but the opportunity to see any Kubrick film on the big screen is not one to be spurned.

So what’s different? Some of the back story has been fleshed out; we learn more about an ‘accident’ involving the alcoholic Jack Torrance (wild-eyed Jack Nicholson) and son Danny that resulted in the boy suffering a significant injury, something Jack alludes to in the European version but is made explicit here. Also spelled out more clearly is Wendy’s (Shelly Duvall) unhappiness with their new home and the emergence of Danny’s imaginary friend. None of these are crucial to the plot, which gives the shorter cut the edge in terms of pace and impact; but there’s not much in it.

…Kubrick avoids offering any sort of explanation, preferring instead to leave the occasional tantalising clue lying around…

Everything that worked previously still works here. The astonishing imagery (those dreamlike steadicam shots of young Danny pedalling around the hotel corridors, or the gallons of blood pouring out of a lift), the eerie soundtrack, the sense of doom that hangs over the tale as it steers towards its frostbitten climax. The deliberately exaggerated and oddly artificial performances (typified by Jack Nicholson’s OTT turn) have the simultaneous effect of distancing the audience from the characters and conjuring an otherworldly atmosphere. It’s reality but not as we know it; as though the actors have been performing the same lines over and over again for years, decades even – an echo of the story itself, which suggests Torrance is reliving the past, doomed to spend eternity at the Overlook Hotel.

Typically, Kubrick avoids offering any sort of explanation, preferring instead to leave the occasional tantalising clue lying around. Has Jack been reincarnated? Sucked in to the past? Or is he just plain mad? It is with this opaque sense of supernatural mystery that THE SHINING continues to enthrall us. Understandably there are some who are confounded and infuriated by its leisurely pace (especially this version) and disinterest in the truth. But not only does it still provoke discussion and multiple interpretations to this day (as evidenced in the recent documentary ROOM 237), it’s also a gloriously entertaining and richly textured excursion into horror – an all too rare achievement.

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