Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a masterpiece.
As a result, some details in the film that seem out of place serve to illustrate the
supernatural forces at work in the Overlook.
Other inconsistencies can't be dismissed so easily.
Here are a few dumb things in The Shining that we just can't ignore.
The creepy sets and confusing layout of the Overlook hotel are a central part of the plot
of The Shining.
The halls are a labyrinth, and the feeling of being lost and isolated with no idea of
what's around the next corner is a key part of what makes everything so scary.
This mysterious feeling is mirrored by the hedge maze outside, and while it's only fitting
that the climax of the film takes place there, the location is established very early on.
Just… not as early as it should've been.
The opening scene of the film gives the audience an aerial view of the Overlook and the grounds,
including the hotel itself, the surrounding forests, and the mountains in the distance.
The feeling of isolation is there, reinforcing the idea that this is the kind of place where
no can hear you scream for help.
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that there's something missing, though.
The hedge maze is supposed to be right next to the hotel, just a short walk away from
the entrance, but in the shot that establishes our setting, it's nowhere to be found, despite
the fact that it's enormous, and would definitely be visible from the sky.
Maybe it just sprung up as a product of Jack's increasing madness, or maybe the curse at
the heart of the Overlook just really likes metaphors.
Before officially accepting the caretaker job, Jack goes to the Overlook for an interview.
At first, it's pretty standard, with Mr. Ullman, the manager, begins telling him all about
the job and his potential responsibilities.
He warns him about just how far away from civilization he'll really be, explaining there's
basically nothing to do outside of the hotel, and that he and his family will be alone.
He then drops what might be the biggest red flag that any job interview has ever had while
discussing how the previous caretaker lost the job.
"Killed his family with an axe."
Ullman also mentions in passing that although they're in Colorado, there's no skiing in
the area.
Clearly, this is just to reinforce the idea that there's no quick way off the mountain,
but it's contradicted by the film itself.
It's tough to spot, but In those aerial shots at the beginning of the film, you can see
a ski lift going up the side of a mountain not far from the hotel.
Before the events of the film take place, Jack Torrance came home drunk one night and
dislocated Danny's shoulder.
He then promised that he wouldn't touch alcohol ever again.
Wendy tells Danny's doctor about the incident, saying that it's been five months since Danny's
injury, and so far, Jack has stayed true to his word.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, Jack later makes a comment that doesn't match up with
Wendy's timeline.
"I did hurt him once, okay?"
When he's sitting at the bar in the Gold Room and griping to the bartender, Lloyd, about
what happened, he says that it all went down three years ago.
There are a couple of possible explanations for this.
The most obvious is that it's just a minor mistake in the script, which makes sense given
how many drafts The Shining went through before it was filmed.
With Kubrick behind the camera, though, there's also a chance that this was totally intentional.
Maybe Jack is disconnecting from time as the isolation of the Overlook drives him mad.
Maybe he's remembering an incident from Grady's life, not his own.
Or maybe, in the most disturbing possibility, that incident a few months ago wasn't the
only time that Jack hurt Danny, and he doesn't even remember the more recent abuse.
When Jack visits the Gold Room and meets Lloyd the bartender, we're not sure if Lloyd is
a ghost or a projection of Jack's twisted mind.
Regardless, Jack strikes up a conversation with him, and orders himself a bourbon on
the rocks.
He drinks throughout his rant about how Wendy won't forgive him for his abuse of Danny,
and when Wendy actually arrives in the Gold Room, crying about a mysterious woman who
tried to strangle Danny, Lloyd suddenly disappears, along with all of the liquor and decor behind
the bar.
It's a genuinely unsettling scene, but either someone in the props department got a little
mixed up, or Lloyd isn't actually the best bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine
— or Portland, Oregon.
Instead of the bourbon he asked for, Lloyd pours Jack's drink from a bottle of Jack Daniel's
Old No. 7, which isn't quite what he asked for.
While Jack Daniel's is legally classified as straight bourbon, the distillery never
markets it or refers to it as anything but whiskey.
Lloyd's technically correct, but a hard drinker like Jack Torrance would definitely know the
difference between a Tennessee Whiskey and a Kentucky Bourbon, even in Colorado.
As the Torrance family drives to the Overlook, we see that they're traveling in a small,
yellow Volkswagen Beetle.
The shots from inside of the car reveal that while it's fairly cramped space, there's at
least enough room for Danny to move around..
Later, in the lobby of the Overlook, however, Jack gestures to the family's huge pile of
luggage sitting by the door.
Jack, Wendy, and Danny are staying at the Overlook for months and there won't be anywhere
for them to go shopping, so they definitely need all their clothes.
If they were really making that journey in a VW Beetle, though, there's no way that they
could've crammed their entire wardrobe in the car and still had room to breathe.
Even with the creepy, space-bending geography of the Overlook, there's only so much that
a Volkswagen can hold… unless they also bought their car from an ancient, cursed burial
ground.
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