5 Things About ‘The Shining’ That Made Zero Sense and 5 Things About It That Made Perfect Sense

Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ builds a winter maze of eerie images and careful details that people still sift through today. The film sets up a simple job in a grand hotel, then layers in visions, voices, and a creeping sense that the building remembers more than any guest ever could.

Some moments give you all the pieces and let you connect them with ease. Others keep key facts off screen or bend space in ways the story never explains. Here are five that do not add up inside the film and five that line up cleanly with what the movie shows.

Zero Sense: The hotel’s impossible layout

Ullman’s office appears to have a sunlit window even though the room sits in the middle of the building. Corridors shift in ways that do not match the exterior, and doorways lead to spaces that cannot exist if you trace the paths seen earlier. The camera invites you to accept a plan that changes as the family moves.

The kitchen tour and the apartment hallway create routes that do not connect when you compare scenes across the winter. The film never supplies a map or a line of dialogue that reconciles these routes with the façade you see outside. The result is an interior that does not follow the rules set by the building’s visible shape.

Perfect Sense: Winter isolation cuts every exit

The Overlook closes for the season, which removes staff, guests, and support. Heavy snow blocks the mountain road and strands the Torrances inside the property. The hotel’s radio goes out after damage to the set and the phone lines are not available in the storms common at that elevation.

A single tracked vehicle becomes the only reliable way out. When the hotel’s snowcat is disabled, the situation locks the family in place until outside help can bridge the distance. The setting explains why help is slow to arrive and why the family must rely on what they can reach inside the grounds.

Zero Sense: The masked guest in the hallway

Late in the film Wendy sees a man in a plush suit with another guest in a bedroom doorway. The image appears without setup, and no character names or context are given on screen. The moment arrives and vanishes before any explanation can be offered inside the story.

Viewers get no information about who these people are, how they relate to the Torrances, or why Wendy can see them. The figure never returns and no later scene connects to this glimpse. The film includes the image but withholds the facts that would locate it within the hotel’s past.

Perfect Sense: The shining explains Danny’s visions

Hallorann explains the shining as a kind of second sight. Danny communicates with him without speaking and receives images that warn him about the danger inside the hotel. Those visions include the twins in the hallway and the elevator that releases a flood of blood.

When Wendy cannot reach help, Danny sends out a silent call that Hallorann recognizes. That signal prompts Hallorann’s trip back to the Overlook with a snowcat that can cross the road. The film shows the ability, shows a mentor who names it, and shows concrete results that follow from it.

Zero Sense: Jack in the 1921 photograph

The final shot shows a ballroom photograph dated July 4th 1921 with Jack at the front of the crowd. The story gives no device or process that would place him in a historical print taken decades earlier. No character explains how the hotel would alter its archives or absorb a new face into a past event.

Throughout the film time moves in a straight line inside the winter stay. The staff mentions the previous caretaker and the hotel’s history, but no scene presents a method that could rewrite a dated image. The photograph stands as a contradiction the film does not resolve within its own events.

Perfect Sense: The prior caretaker sets a clear pattern

Ullman tells Jack about a caretaker named Grady who killed his wife and daughters during a winter closing. That history establishes a pattern of violence that echoes through the hotel. The staff shares the facts before snow arrives, which sets a reference point for what follows.

Jack later meets a man who identifies himself as Grady and speaks about duty and correction. The encounter ties the present caretaker to the past caretaker and gives a direct line from the hotel’s history to Jack’s current choices. The narrative supplies the names, the actions, and the connection that links the two winters.

Zero Sense: Hallorann’s rescue that ends at the lobby

Hallorann receives Danny’s call, secures flights and ground transport, and reaches the hotel during the storm. He enters the lobby while calling out to announce himself. Jack immediately strikes him with an axe and kills him before any rescue plan can unfold.

The film does not show how Jack anticipates the precise moment of arrival or why Hallorann enters without a safer sweep of the building. No radio contact or outside coordination is shown once he starts the final approach. The long trip resolves in a sudden death that the story does not set up with on screen signals.

Perfect Sense: Alcohol and the hotel’s manipulation

Wendy describes an earlier incident when Jack hurt Danny while drinking. Inside the hotel Jack meets a bartender who serves him and a butler who directs him. Those encounters escalate right after Jack’s sobriety breaks, which links his weakness to the influence that pushes him toward violence.

The film shows how Jack’s conversations in the Gold Room lead to a change in his decisions. He sides with the voices that tell him to isolate his family and to stop anyone who tries to leave. The bar and the ballroom provide the setting and the words that move him toward the same path as the prior caretaker.

Zero Sense: The pantry door that opens by itself

Wendy locks Jack in the kitchen pantry and slides the heavy bolt into place. Jack later speaks to the voice of Grady through the door. The latch lifts and Jack exits without any visible person present to move it.

The film rarely shows physical manipulation by apparitions, and no character is placed on the other side of the door when it opens. There is no on screen mechanism that lets the bolt retract by itself. The event happens, but the story offers no factual step inside the winter that accounts for it.

Perfect Sense: The maze strategy that saves Danny

Danny lays footprints in fresh snow, then walks backward to erase his trail and steps off the path to hide behind a wall of hedges. Jack follows the prints and loses the trail at the point where Danny reversed his steps. The plan uses the conditions of the maze and the snowfall to break pursuit.

Danny then leaves the maze by a direct route to the entrance where Wendy arrives with the working snowcat. The cold slows Jack and closes off his options as the night continues. The film shows each move and shows how the terrain and weather make those moves effective.

Share the moments in ‘The Shining’ that baffled you and the ones that made the most sense in the comments.