The Shining: Mr. Halloran, what IS in Room 237?

In all the times I have watched The Shining, there is one part that I always wonder about..Room 237, and what it's role really is as intended by Kubrick..Yes, this is indeed one of the reasons why I love this movie so much because the genius of Kubrick's minimalism is that you keep coming back for more and asking more and more questions. I have seen the film so many times I have lost count, yet I still have questions, much like with Kubrick's other films....But back to room 237..early on in the film we see Danny in the bathroom mirror (still at the Torrance's apartment) while Jack is at the Overlook Hotel for his interview...We hear the haunting music begin, and we know something is about to happen. Danny asks his alter-ego "Tony" why he doesn't want to go to the hotel, and "Tony" resists telling Danny, but eventually we see Danny's horrible vision of the hotel with blood pouring out of elevators and a brief flash of the twin girls, (presumably the dead caretaker Grady's daughters). Danny obviously has terrible premonitions about the danger of going to the hotel...Later in the film, while Jack and Wendy are being shown around by the manager, Ullman, Danny is having ice cream with the head cook, Halloran, who also shares Danny's ability to "shine" or see things that ordinary people can't see...He tells Danny that the "shining" is more common than not. Danny apparently reads Halloran's mind about fearing room 237 in the hotel, and asks about it...Halloran blows off the question, warning Danny to stay out of the room....Kubrick probably intends us to think that Halloran had some frightening experience in room 237 at some point, but what exactly he saw remains unclear...At any rate, Halloran clearly is worried that Danny should avoid that room...Later in the film, the staff have all gone, and the Torrances are all alone at the hotel....We see in one scene Danny riding his scooter on the second floor through the deserted halls, and he comes upon room 237, no doubt remembering what Halloran said or what he himself feels about the room....Danny gets off his scooter and slowly approaches the room's closed double doors..He tries to open the door, but it is locked...As he does this, he sees a brief vision of the twin girls, who seem to warn him to stay away...Danny quickly backs up from the door and rides away on his scooter...Later on, the Overlook Hotel is completely snowbound, and Danny is again on the second floor, this time playing with his toys on the carpet...A ball rolls towards him mysteriously...We hear the same dreaded music on the soundtrack, as if to portend some kind of evil intent..Danny calls out for his mom, wondering if maybe she is teasing him by rolling the ball to him....But there is noone there...The dreaded music continues playing...Danny slowly walks down the hall, seeing the door to room 237 open..He again calls out to his mom, asking if she is in there....We of course know she is not....The scene cuts out just as Danny enters room 237, and we see Wendy in the boiler room checking the gauges. At this same time, Jack is having a terrible nightmare, and calls out. Wendy runs to him, and Jack says he dreamed he killed Wendy and Danny, cutting them up into "little pieces". Perhaps Jack had this dream while Danny was in room 237 because it was the hotel's way of getting into his head. Soon after, Danny comes out and has bruises on his neck, and has clearly met with some kind of physical/emotional trauma, as he cannot talk...Curiously, we never see what happened to Danny in room 237, but we can guess that some terrible physical manifestation probably occurred.....

Later on, Wendy finds Jack  in the Colorado Lounge (after  earlier accusing him of hurting Danny) and tells him that Danny told her that some "crazy woman" in one of the rooms tried to strangle Danny. Jack asks her which room, intending to investigate..Jack by this time is seriously unstable, and the hotel has nearly possessed him entirely...The next scene we see is Halloran laying on his bed in Miami, watching tv...At first nothing seems amiss...But soon, he enters what can only be called a trance, his eyes open wide with an expression of sheer terror, and he starts trembling....We again hear the dreaded music and also, this time, a strange heartbeat on the soundtrack....As Halloran is "shining", we also see that Danny is in the same state, drooling and trembling, in a trance....Then, the camera cuts to the open door of room 237, and the camera leads us inside, the music and heartbeat sound very consistent...The room appears fairly unremarkable, with a garish 1970s decor, and a living room, and to the left, up a stair, a bedroom...We see at the back of the bedroom a door slightly ajar, the camera continues moving us closer to this door...The heartbeat and dreadful music continue....We see a hand come from behind the camera, pushing the door open, revealing a large bathroom, in green and yellow....Then, we see that in fact Jack has entered room 237 to investigate what Wendy had told him about Danny seeing a woman in there.....Jack looks to the back of the bathroom, and there is clearly someone or something behind the shower curtain in the tub...Jack initially looks scared, but then a hand draws the curtain back, revealing an attractive, nude, blonde woman. Jack appears to relax, and smiles a devilish smile....But we know instinctively that this is very wrong and that something evil is in this room...The woman slowly stands up, and steps out of the bathtub, walking to center of the bathroom....She then pauses, as if to beckon Jack closer...Jack walks to her, and she caresses him......During all this, the dreadful music and heartbeat (which began when we saw Halloran enter his trance) continues.....The woman in room 237 embraces Jack and they kiss....But then, we see a closeup of Jack's face as he sees an adjacent mirror, and a terrible sight appears....What was a beautiful young woman is now a rotten, ugly old hag, who begins laughing at Jack, and Jack, appalled, backs out of the room, as she follows him out, laughing all the while...As she does this, the camera pans to the bath, and we see another rotten, toothless old woman rise out of the tub, even as the other figure chases Jack out.....Then, the camera cuts to Danny briefly, still in a trance, trembling, and salivating, perhaps recalling his experience in room 237 earlier....Jack makes it out of the room, closing the door and locking the door, we still hear the woman cackling from inside....

Now what exactly did all this mean? Well, in my opinion, we can't take it too literally....Some may say that the woman in room 237 was the ghost of the former caretaker, Grady, who had murdered his wife and daughters at the hotel during the winter of 1970....However, I think Kubrick means for the answer to be more complex than this....I think the woman in room 237 is actually the physical manifestation of the evil presence which lives inside the Overlook Hotel....Think of the heartbeat on the soundtrack....we never hear it early in the film, only about halfway through, after the Torrances have already been at the hotel for some time, and the hotel has had time to tap into their psyche....The moment when Jack enters room 237 is truly when the evil presence in the hotel is awakened.....The "woman" in the tub was simply a manifestation to lure or appeal to Jack.....Danny might have seen something different when he entered room 237...In short, the hotel's presence is able to adopt whatever physical form it needs to to achieve its aim, which is to possess and to cause more death, which would therefore add to it's strength....After Jack has entered room 237 and had his encounter there, the old "hag" who we see in there is basically laughing and taunting him, showing that Jack has basically surrendered to the hotel and that now the hotel is in charge, as it were.....I think this is why Halloran was so worried about room 237 when he was talking to Danny early in the film, because Halloran sensed that room 237 was in fact the place in the hotel where the evil lived.....Once Jack entered room 237, and kissed the "woman" in there, the hotel basically was in charge, and that is why we hear the heartbeat on the soundtrack for basically the rest of the film.....The heartbeat is I believe Kubrick's way of showing that the hotel has "awakened" as it were, and is now breathing and has a beating heat, thanks to Jack.....In that sense, Jack's entry into room 237 and his embrace of the evil in there acted like a "cpr" to jumpstart the hotel's evil presence from it's slumber.....These are my interpretations of this particular aspect of the film.....So to sum up, I feel Kubrick intended room 237 to be far more than just a scary room, but actually the key to the entire film and the things that the Overlook Hotel causes to  happen......Yet another sign of the man's brilliance as a director......Sure, it may not follow the book very closely, but who cares....Kubrick gives us a psychological, horror, and gothic masterpiece which constantly keeps us guessing without making everything blatantly obvious!

Analyzing The Shining

The Shining film directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1980 is in my opinion one of the best films ever made, for its imagry, subtle horror, psychological thrill, and ability to constantly surprise. Kubrick leaves some characters in the film ambiguous, as to their motivations and “core” if you will. That said, Halloran (the black man) in the film seems to be a basically friendly presence, particularly to Danny, explaining the gift they both share and warning him about room 237. I think the film works so well because Kubrick doesnt bombard us with ghosts and goblins, and slashers around every corner in the hotel. The genius of the film is its subtlety. We feel the atmosphere of the hotel, we know it is a bad place, without having to see all that has happened there. We get a taste here and there, such as Danny’s vision of the Grady girls’ bodies, and of course room 237. But there is a creeping, building feeling of dread and apprehension that does not abate for the entire film, even after watching it multiple times. The film focuses on human descent into madness, inadequacy, hatred, resentment, all played out by the Torrances on the canvas of the Overlook Hotel during the winter. I think another reason the film works so well is that there is very little fuddy-duddy warm and fuzziness. If there were scenes like this, the film would not have worked. Kubrick makes us believe that the Torrances are a tortured family, from Jack’s major issues, to his and Wendy’s seemingly strained marriage, to the bizarre interactions between Danny and Jack.  There are scenes of love between Wendy and Danny of course, but even these are tempered. Now back to your question about Halloran, the cook, who befriends Danny and later returns to the hotel when he senses something very wrong. I think Halloran might be meant to be a positive counterweight to the overwhelming malevolent presence of the hotel, and the dark human tragedy playing out there as Jack goes insane and tries to kill his family. We arent told how long Halloran has worked at the Overlook, but he clearly has been there long enough to know about the hotel’s presence and potential for bad. I don’t think you can read too much into the nude women in Halloran’s hotel room in the scene before he “shines” as Jack is simultaneously entering room 237. I think this might just be Kubrick’s way of showing that Halloran has a naughty side, but that he isn’t squeaky clean, basically making him more relatable and “hip” to the audience. The scene at the airport when Halloran calls his friend Larry asking for a snowcat shows him saying why its so important he get to the hotel. He says the people taking care of the place are complete “assholes” and that “Ullman phoned him and wanted him to go up and see if they needed to be replaced”. I think this is simply Halloran making a quick, plausible excuse to as not to arise suspicion about what he suspects might be happening at the hotel. If in fact Halloran “shines” what we the viewers see as Jack goes into room 237, and basically embraces the evil of the hotel, then Halloran will indeed be very worried about what might transpire, especially if he is aware of what happened when Charles Grady went berserk in 1970 when HE was caretaker at the hotel and killed his family. Halloran just wants to get to the hotel as quick as he can, either to check on his suspicions, or maybe on the off-chance that he is mistaken and the family is actually okay..But I don’t for a moment believe Ullman actually phoned Halloran to go to the hotel. I think Halloran did this all on his own, based on his premonitions and “shining” of room 237. Remember in the bathroom scene, when Delbert Grady (the 1920s waiter) is talking to Jack, he tells Jack that Danny is “attempting to bring an outside party into this situation” he is referring to Halloran. I think that is the hotel worrying about any outsiders interfering with what they hope will be a repeat of the 1970 tragedy at the Overlook. These are some of my interpretations! Feel free to comment I will be adding several posts about this great film.