Mr Scaredy Pants.

Last night I found myself watching the first hour or so of ‘The Shining’. It’s an evergreen, really. A film you can flick onto at any point and just roll along with. If it’s not a perfect film then it can’t be far off it, and while it may not be my favourite film ever, it could at least achieve the lofty, weightless accolade of being my favourite horror film. Could. And perhaps if it isn’t my favourite horror film then it could be my favourite Stanley Kubrick film, though ‘Barry Lyndon’ could give it a run for its money. Again, could. But what I can tell you is that the first hour or so of ‘The Shining’ last night, when I should have been in bed, was like watching it for the first time all over again. Kubrick was so obsessed with filling his film (and it is his film, his version, his story, which is why Stephen King never got on with it) with all sorts of curious intricacies, diversions and conspiracies that there is always something new to spot and always something old to miss. There is even a documentary called ‘Room 237’, all about those allegedly hidden messages and suddenly turned corners, be they red herrings or not, which is almost as fascinating as the piece of art work it tasks itself to unravel. Almost.

But what is so crucial about the horror of ‘The Shining’ is that it delivers a horror I can actually stomach. It scares me, a little, but it doesn’t haunt me. It has a scattering of violence and a sprinkling of butchery but it isn’t enough to keep me awake at night. It serves as a part of the horror genre but it exists on an artistic plateau at a far higher altitude. It is beautiful and beating and lush, less filmed and more lovingly crafted, a horror film as complex and rich as a top end Rembrandt, whereas most horror would rather be a Damien Hirst – eye-catching but blatant, gratuitous, food for talk rather than thought, wilfully sickly and ultimately not made fit for eternity. And unfortunately that is what horror on screen means to me, most of the time. It’s a strange thing but I can watch men, and women, punch and cut and mow one another down in the name of war, business or revenge but as soon as a film puts a horror hat on I feel compelled to look away and, in almost every case, deny all association. I’m not great with romantic comedies either and musicals are the true lowest of the low, but at least they don’t make me wish I had switched over to a repeat of Wheel Of Fortune.

In the last year or so I have watched a handful of horror films from the seventies and eighties that made me realise just how tame things were back then. ‘The Exorcist’ is a good bit of film making but you have to push yourself to really get scared by it, or bother watching it again. ‘Fright Night’, ‘Friday The 13th’ and ‘The Amityville Horror’ are fun, but as a result rendered so slight they may as well be reclassified as children’s movies. That said, ‘The Omen’ has always stayed close to my heart; the right balance, a touch of class, the chill in the inevitability of evil. Interestingly (or not), I watched an old BBC version of ‘The Woman In Black’ a few months ago and that has proved to be the scariest thing I’ve seen for years – it does still give me chills at night and, unless I skipped a bit, there isn’t a drop of blood in sight. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me and horror – it has become a vessel for ever more excess and an extreme meanness of spirit. More blood, more guts, more shock, more torture and, crucially, more pain; for where would today’s horror be without pain and human suffering and the ever more perversely ludicrous ways to ensure it is both delivered and felt?

When I was young (too young, it turned out) I was offered the opportunity to watch the first ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’, and it is safe to assume that I did not enjoy the experience one tiny bit. I knew then that I didn’t like it and so I struggled to work out what it was for – what purpose did it serve, why would someone deliberately make it to cause discomfort, what is the point of scaring yourself voluntarily? Of course, I was too young, and remain too stupid, to answer questions such as these, and besides, I’d much rather go back to ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ now than watch some of the stuff that comes out today (as a case in point, I only watched ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’ as an easily impressionable teenager because a friend told me it had a scene wherein a rather appealing nurse peeled off her starched whites – and indeed she did, but then she turned into Freddie Kruger, who proceeded to rip the veins out of his next victim’s arms so he could use them as a puppet, which rather took away from the aesthetic benefits of a blonde health care worker going topless of her own volition, but at least I had something positive to salvage from the experience). Now horror is made for jumps and groans, slash and splatters, in abundance enough to see how far you can go without a member of the Board of Classification (eg, oddly enough, Natasha Kaplinsky) being sick into their cornflakes for the next three weeks.

There is a horror franchise currently on the loose out there called ‘The Terrifier’. Even the publicity stills are enough to put me off for life. The films follow the adventures of Art the Clown, a ridiculous looking, bloody mouthed fuck-bag who, so I am told, spends his time in each of the three instalments (so far – they are making a lot from not a lot of budget and so, as the first law of movie sequels demands, they will run and run until someone very rich can no longer pull any more cash out of them) coming up with ever more awful things to do with the clearly very vulnerable bodies of every human being he comes across; I am also told that in the opening scene of ‘The Terrifier 3’ our hero chops up an entire family with an axe and arranges their body parts around the subsequently blood drenched room with more than a little artistic flair, though I will go to my grave never checking if this is true. I suppose I kind of get it on one level – horror films are a reaction to the abject awfulness of living a life on a very messed up planet, but surely a better tonic would be a nice cup of cocoa and a couple of episodes of Winterwatch, though ideally not the one where Chris Packham puts Michaela Strachan through a wood chipper for not recognising the tiny difference between two very similar sub-species of waterfowl.

I suppose there’s not much point getting too snobby about it. I like what I like and I give the things I don’t a swerve. After all, the body horror hit of 2024 appears to be ‘The Substance’, which has been nominated for rather a lot of awards; which is an achievement in itself in an industry which has an even greater level of distain for horror movies than I do. The last third of ‘The Substance’ is apparently (again, I can only go by what I have been told) an orgy of flesh and organs and thick, red syrup that is certainly not for the faint of heart, and yet here it is being afforded a level of professional respect that would have been unthinkable forty years ago. ‘The Shining’, meanwhile, seems to succeed with the odd splash of claret (comparatively speaking) and making the most of Jack Nicholson’s ability to look like an unhinged lunatic and Shelley Duval’s ability to appear deeply, deeply unhappy about how her winter is going. I would like to say I will try to broaden my exposure to the modern horror movie but I know I won’t last beyond the opening credits (I didn’t sleep for two whole nights after watching ‘Paranormal Activity’ at the cinema – and that’s a dreadful movie – so I think I know what I’m talking about). But last night ‘The Shining’ didn’t keep me awake for a second (well, apart from when I was awake watching it), and for that I am grateful. And who needs some daft, nasty horror movie to keep you awake when there is so much else to turn your mind to in the middle of the night, when the real ghosts and memories of things that have already come to pass come out to play their terrifying little tricks? It’s the things that aren’t make believe that give me the real shivers, so horror movies can just take a back seat for now.

G B Burton. 25.01.2025