SOURCE: “The Uncanny and the Fairy Tale in Kubrick's The Shining,” in Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. XII, No. 1, 1984, pp. 5-12.

In the following essay, Hoile assesses the influence of the supernatural and fairy tales on The Shining.

Most critics of Stanley Kubrick's latest film, The Shining, seem to feel that he has provided so much psychological motivation for the events in the movie that he has rendered unnecessary the presence of the supernatural and extrasensory perception, thereby draining the horror from what was heralded as “the ultimate horror film.” Jack Kroll says that “The sight of Torrance's endlessly repeated sentence chills you with its revelation of a man so clogged and aching with frustrated creativity that his desire to kill doesn't need to be explained by his seizure by sinister and suppurating creatures from a time warp of pure evil.”¹ Pauline Kael asks, “Do the tensions between father...