​The Overlook Hotel from The Shining (1980)

This is the Overlook Hotel, the fictional setting for the 1980 psychological horror film The Shining.

In real life, it is called the Timberline Lodge, and it is located at 27500 East Timberline Road in Government Camp, Oregon.

The film was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It was based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name.

The remote mountain resort is a composite of several locations.

The exterior of the hotel was filmed at the Timberline Lodge, while the interior and maze scenes were shot at EMI Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, England.

Plot summary

The film's plot follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a job as the winter caretaker at the hotel. He moves to the isolated resort with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd).

The family arrives on closing day, when everyone is getting ready to leave for the seasonal break.

Jack's son, Danny, unknowingly possesses a telepathic ability called "the shining," which allows him to see the hotel's dark past.

The head chef, Dick Hallorann, also has "the shining." After bringing Danny to the kitchen for some ice cream, Hallorann informs him about their shared ability and warns him to avoid Room 237.

That winter, the Torrance family becomes stranded by the harsh winter weather.

As their isolation grows, Jack's mental health deteriorates.

He suffers from writer's block, is lured back to drinking by a ghostly bartender named Lloyd, and begins having violent outbursts.

He also begins to have hallucinations.

His wife Wendy later discovers that his manuscript consists of a single, endlessly repeated 17th-century proverb: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

Wendy is forced to hit Jack over the head with a baseball bat after he becomes threatening. While he is unconscious, she drags him into the pantry and locks the door.

When she tries to take Danny and leave, she learns that her husband has destroyed the hotel's radio and snowcat.

The ghost of Grady eventually frees Jack from the pantry after he promises to "deal" with his family.

After being released, Jack pursues his wife and son with an axe.

As he is trying to hunt them down, Hallorann shows up at the hotel.

When Jack hears Hollorann, he lies in wait until he can ambush him with the axe.

Shortly afterwards, he sees his son Danny running through one of the corridors.

Jack limps after Danny and pursues him through the large hedge maze outside. However, Danny misleads him and escapes by backtracking in the snow.

Consequently, Jack becomes lost in the maze and quickly freezes to death.

The film ends with a slow zoom onto a hotel photograph from July 4th, 1921, which shows Jack at a party.

Production

The production of the film was complex and took place almost exclusively in England, where Kubrick lived.

While the events in the movie take place in Colorado, the interiors of the Overlook Hotel were built as large, detailed sets at EMI Elstree Studios.

These sets were based on the interior design of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.

The studio construction allowed Kubrick to create a deliberately confusing and physically impossible layout to disorient viewers.

Executive producer Jan Harlan confirmed that the sets were built to be "offbeat" and that the "huge corridors and ballrooms couldn't fit inside."

The iconic hedge maze and a full-scale re-creation of the hotel's exterior facade were also built in the backlot at Elstree Studios for most of the scenes.

A second crew filmed the dramatic establishing shots of the hotel's facade using the Timberline Lodge in Oregon.

The film's opening aerial sequence of the family's yellow Volkswagen was shot along the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana's Glacier National Park.

Much of the confusion about the hotel's location stems from differences between the movie and the original novel.

Author Stephen King was inspired to write The Shining after he and his wife stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, in 1974. They were the only guests in the hotel as it was preparing to close for the winter.

Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation did not use the Stanley Hotel.

King was critical of Kubrick's film due to its deviations from his novel. In 1997, a new TV miniseries adaptation, which King supervised, was filmed at the Stanley Hotel.

The film and novel also differ on two key features.

The room number in the book was 217, which is a real room at the Stanley. However, the Timberline Lodge requested the number be changed, as it was worried that guests would be too afraid to stay in their Room 217. Consequently, the non-existent number 237 was used instead.

Furthermore, King's novel featured topiary animals, not a maze.

In 2015, the Stanley Hotel paid homage to the 1980 film by adding a hedge maze.