The Shining

However, this is only minute in comparison to the total dream effect in the film. How credible is the film's entirety? What is the audience's reception? .
             With the film being based on a Stephen King novel, the audience knows right away that this is a horror story, but at the same time a tale of fantasy and magic. This is reinforced through the opening imagery of the film. As in most dreams, we have an omniscient point of view which is included in this shot. Here we soar through the air above the imposing and somewhat terrifying Colorado imagery, following the Torrance family's car along a winding and never ending road. The viewer is being taken for a ride, figuratively as well as literally. The music, similar to banshee-like screeching, foreshadows a tale of evil and despair just as the gargantuan setting suggests an oppression or insurmountable feat that each character will face. Within these few opening minutes the dream ideology is established. .
             The film recounts the story of the Torrance family (Jack, Wendy, and Danny) who take on the responsibility of being caretakers during the winter for the Overlook Hotel, a resort isolated from most of civilization. When Jack (Jack Nicholson) meets the hotel manager, Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson), the interview is strange and often bizarre since Ullman responds positively to everything Torrance says. The scene is ordinary but with an undertone suggesting that all is not right and scarier things are yet to unfold. This is especially true when Ullman's associate tells Torrance of the carnage that the hotel had witnessed ten years prior. The manager is obviously taken back and jokingly asks Jack that if such an incident would keep him from taking the job. Paradoxically, Torrance announces that he isn't afraid of such things. But his nonchalant and almost uncaring attitude seems as though it comes from the unconscious since in dreams, everyone has some form of bravado, or a kind of repression, which appears.