What was their end game? Their goal?
It's a bit odd we see that they can physically manifest and unlock the larder door to let Jack out, yet at the same time Mrs Jack is (ridiculously btw) quite peacefully asleep in their quarters. If they can move objects why not just move a knife through the air and kill her in her sleep?
Why do they need Jack to do it?
How do you know that ‘they’ let Jack out of the larder? There is no evidence of that. In fact Jack could’ve let himself out of the larder as the door could be opened from the inside. Jack is actually holding onto this door opening mechanism while speaking to Grady, this is clearly seen. Who the heck is Mrs Jack? Did you mean Wendy? lol. And as for knives flying through the air, this wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining as what we got.
shareHow do you know that ‘they’ let Jack out of the larder? There is no evidence of that. In fact Jack could’ve let himself out of the larder as the door could be opened from the inside.
Do you know there was actually a second entrance/exit door inside the larder? You can clearly see it when Hallorann is giving Jack and Wendy the hotel tour.
I totally recommend this YouTube channel -
https://youtube.com/user/robag88
This guy does in depth analysis of certain key scenes in The Shining. One of these scenes is the larder escape scene, the one you are mentioning. It’s all pretty interesting stuff.
Is that some Scouse guy? I watched something earlier after posting here but it all seemed an incredible reach and for a purpose I couldn't really understand - maybe to back up a "no ghosts, all in Jack's head" theory.
Seemed a bit daft to me - we hear the door being unlocked and the bolt pulled back. Jack then smiles, presumably on seeing the door open. But if not and we go with that second door theory, I guess we have to believe Jack was just hallucinating the door opening noises, smiled for no reason, then at some later point stumbled across the unlocked other door. As even that video conceded though, we later see the door Mrs Jack locked opened, so we also have to accept Jack, after getting out, went to the trouble of unlocking that main door for absolutely no purpose 🙄...
Not giving Mr Kubrick much credit that particular theory. Although, as I was saying earlier, I can only assume coming up with something like that is to support some further harebrained hypothesis.
In a making of documentary a writer or producer said the opening of the door is the only place in the script requiring supernatural explanation. It was the ghosts.
shareInteresting. What's the take on the opening (or putting the keys in the door) of room 237?
My assumption was that was also the spirits, although it could be debated it was Jack or even Mrs Jack if you wanted to go with more outlandish theories...
I don't remember what was said about 237 specifically. It's in one these torrents.
The Shining Bonus 1of4 View from The Overlook Crafting the Shining
The Shining Bonus 2of4 The.Visions.of.Stanley.Kubrick
The Shining Bonus 3of4 The Making of the Shining
Maybe they have rules.
shareHere is my interpretation: Because the hotel was built on top of an Indian Burial ground the spirits of the Native Americans put a curse on the hotel. The guests/staff of the hotel when it was built are cursed to be reincarnated, the forces of nature guide them back to the hotel where the spirits seduce them and convince them to kill their families as a blood sacrifice. The spirits of the families are then cursed to stay at the hotel forever.
Jack may have been the hotel’s caretaker back in the 1920’s (Grady tells him “you’ve always been the caretaker”) and I’m guessing Grady had been a waiter, but regardless they were both cursed to return as the caretaker where they repaid their sins with a blood sacrifice of their families.
It’s possible they wanted the hotel to be closed which as we know from Doctor Sleep is what happened.
I think Kubrick was smart enough to make the ghosts' motives ambiguous. They definitely want to cause harm it seems but that might not be directed at the Torrances.
Perhaps they can only interact with and manipulate physical objects that they moved and interacted with during their original timeline. For instance they are all reliving the same party over and over again, so if during that party the deadbolt to the pantry was unlocked by someone then the hotel could physically make it happen whenever, the physical object actually stays the same but the time period its existing in changes. That would allow for doors opening and closing, even objects moving to different locations.
I don't think the spirits necessarily had "personalities" or free will, per se, they were manifestations of tragedies which had occurred in the hotel.
shareLook, it's obvious it was the spirits, we saw them open the door, come in and drag Jack out with them. They looked, for some reason, like the classic Universal Horror monsters. There, case closed, it was spirits.
Oh wait, or am I thinking of The Simpsons? :)