Why The Shining is Terrifying

WHAT! Worst actress? Shelly was brilliant! She’s what made it all the more believable

Stephen King was right. The Kubrick movie IS cold and heartless, and a movie made to hurt people, with its dishevelled characters, weird camera angles and dissonant music. That's what makes it brilliant!

I really just feel bad for Shelley, knowing how she was treated on set and also that people called her a bad actress. I think her performance was great and really fits in to this movie.

How the hell did Shelly Duvall get a razzie nomination? She has the most realistic expressions of fear I’ve ever seen in a movie

the fact that Shelly won worst actress is absolutely unimaginable to me. Her performance is incomparable and no one could have done it better

Someone once told me that The Shining is a bad movie. I...corrected them.

The tenuous way Shelly holds the knife in one scene, and her frustratingly weak swinging of the bat in another reminds me of a horrific nightmare where you are so frightened, that every muscle has simply turned to Jello...

I really feel for Shelly Duvall. This was a terribly difficult movie for her. And she later kind of dropped out, lost her desire to act, and kind of lost her way. I don't think she ever truly recovered.

Also, I love Shelley Duval’s performance. I can’t picture anyone else in the role. I think she was perfect as Wendy.

Kubrick literally drove shelly duvall insane. Shes not right to this day. Hell Nicholson isnt right to this day. On set Stanley would belittle Duvall and tell her how untalented and incompetent she was. He would mock her appearance by placing statues of goofy on set wearing what matched her wardrobe. Maybe what King meant is he literally hurt people, and part of what makes the movie uneasy is youre witnessing spiritual vampirism against real people.

The Shining was specifically horrifying to me. As a child who grew up witnessing domestic violence, this behavior wasn't out of the norm to me. I barely remember this movie as being supernatural at all. I just thought it was like my father. The supernatural elements were excuses to fool his wife and child that he wasn't in control. He was. And was sadistic. And I was terrified knowing how hopeless and isolated the characters felt, and learning about the abuse of actors, I know that fear was genuine. I saw this as a child, haven't watched it since, and even my abused mom wasn't as scared as I was during it.

Shelly’s acting was one thing that cemented the insane and hopeless feeling in my mind

I love Shelly Duvall's performance in The Shining. I think one of the reasons people instinctively tend not to like it is that they like to imagine themselves in that situation reacting to horror and danger in a more presentable and dignified manner. Which I think is not realistic and comes almost entirely from one's own ego. The reality is, if someone stampeded into your home and tried to murder you, you'd probably have facial expressions that'd look pretty stupid on film too.

The real terror is knowing how Kubrick treated his actors. Edit, 3 years down the line: That and the fact that y'all keep fucking replying to this. I get it, some of y'all are rude online.

The movie touches on real life horrors: domestic abuse, alcoholism, and murder-suicide. The theme is how the evil that drives these things never goes away…it gets passed down from one generation to the next.

King later said it took him years to learn that the story telling conventions are different for written and visual mediums. He learned that after the dreadful, but accurate to the book, TV version of The Shining.

Kubrick was awful towards Shelly, the baseball bat scene with the stairs was shot so many times, with no breaks, and went on for hours on end, just as most of the hard hitting scenes were done. Shelly was exhausted and you can tell in her acting, in which those tears and the terror and exhaustion is genuine. Which is why this scene (to me) hits the hardest with Wendy's growing fear for her husband hits its boiling point. Taking into the fact that Kubrick isolated Shelly from the rest of the crew/cast, and had them deliberately ignore Shelly when not filming, you can tell Shelly's hurt portrayed in this is real. It has been stated at one point the mental exhaustion Shelly experienced while filming made her consider quitting the film all together. The reason we've not seen Shelly in anymore huge roles like Wendy is because of the mental hurt this role done on her. Also, just as a random fact, Stephen King wanted Jessica Lange to play Wendy.

Shelly Duvall is the star of this movie to me. I felt every emotion she felt. I never understood why people panned her performance (back then). Watching her is captivating.

"Im not gonna kill ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in." That line is beyond amazing for a horror film.

Let's be honest , when Jack goes mad you actually feel her sense of utter fear and hopelessness