Horror Films Shine Bright

For our horror week I watched The Shining, a classic film based on the book by the famous Stephen King. If you haven’t seen it before then I think you need a quick overview. The Shining is about Jack, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. With Jack is his wife Wendy and young son Danny who possesses "the shining", an array of psychic abilities that allow Danny to see the hotel's horrific past. The hotel's current cook, Dick also has this ability and can telepathically communicate with Danny. The hotel had a previous winter caretaker who went crazy and killed his wife, two daughters and then himself. After a winter storm leaves the Torrances snowbound, Jack's sanity deteriorates due to the influence of the supernatural forces that inhabit the hotel, placing his wife and son in danger.

I love watching this movie. Not only does it have its gore scenes, but it also makes you really think about the twisted things that are happening. I think our reading by Carroll on ‘The Paradox of Horror’ helps to explain why people like me love horror movies such as this. The interesting theory Carroll proposes on the paradox of horror basically says is that things in horror that should repel and repulse us actually do the opposite. I think for a lot of people this is true. The genre of horror is not lacking fans, therefore it is fair to say people want to be repulsed and disgusted. We have to figure out why this is the case.

One idea proposed is cosmic fear. Fear triggers this sense of fascination of wonder and curiosity. I particularly think it relates to the supernatural. The Shining is full of supernatural events. There are premonitions of the past and future, ghosts or some type of spirit communicating to the living, at the very end the idea of reincarnation, and much more. There is a lot happening in this film and if you blink you might miss something. “Thus, to a large extent, the horror story is driven explicitly by curiosity. It engages its audience by being involved in processes of disclosure, discovery, proof, explanation, hypothesis, and confirmation.” Horror stories such as The Shining instil this desire to learn and know. With so many things difficult to explain in this movie, such as Jack communicating with the previous caretaker and Overlook Hotel murderer, we can’t help but be compelled to try and discover an explanation. “Applied to the paradox of horror, these observations suggest that the pleasure derived from the horror fiction and the source of our interest in it resides, first and foremost, in the processes of discovery, proof, and confirmation that horror fictions often employ.”

There is a special functional relationship between the beings that mark off the horror genre and the pleasure and interest that many horror fictions sustain. In order to reward our interest by the disclosure of the impossible beings of the plot, said beings ought to be disturbing, distressing, and repulsive. If they weren’t unique like this, people would not show as much interest. The Shining is a movie that requires deep thought to try and understand the unnatural and horrific events that take place. It is in my opinion a fantastic movie that captivates you and Carroll helps to explain why that is the case.