Torrents of clar🔜et. Ghost girls. “Heeeere’s Johnny.”

The key scares of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 art-horror are such staples of Scary Moments schedule-filler, it’s tempting to ༺think we know the Overlook i💎nside out.

This bang-up reissue says otherwise.

Seen in its rightful place on the big 🌳screen, it’s clear to see how hard Kubrick’s Steadicam symphony of sound, space and seductive motion works to unsettle certainty: to make itself unknowable.

Don’t be fooled by source novelist Stephen King’s simple “home💝y”-horror set-up, where blocked writer and (barely) recovering boozer Jack To🌠rrance (Jack Nicholson) finds that winter with wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and kid Danny (Danny Lloyd) in a haunted, high-altitude hotel isn’t healthy.

Madness ensues but the fact that Kuꦗbrick screened David Lynch’s for his crew proves he wasn’t serving up🍎 stalk’n’slash gruel.

He was aiming for mind-mashing mysಌtery, blurring place, spooks and psychology in ambiguity.

Unreliaಞble POVs help, from🧸 the eye-in-the-sky (whose?) opening to crackers Jack, wired Wendy and odd Danny, with juggling viewpoints that throw our orientation.

But the crux of his design is the construction of the Overlook as a wo🍨rld unto itself, not just in its isolation but in his abstract orchestration of its parts.

Watched in this (25 minutes) longeꦯr version on the big screen, the oppressive reds, mounting heart-thump noises and deep corridors all bring a sense of cabᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚin fever: we’re right in it.

Nicholson’s perhaps overbearing big bad wolf-ery almost shatters that air of e💦levated control, though not without purpose: when he axe-chops d🌱oor/screen simultaneously, Kubrick strikes with subliminal, metahorror intent.

The cinema becomes the Overlook’s double and ༒the brilliantly teasing final image entangles us further in its enigmas.

As recent docu-essay showed, the Overℱlook’s mystꦉeries aren’t spent. We’ll always go back.