Shelley Duvall, Not Jack Nicholson, Carries 'The Shining'

By Elena Vasquez

Shelley Duvall — not Jack Nicholson — is the actor carrying Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." That is the verdict of a Halloween-season rewatch published by the reviewer, who caught the 1980 film on the big screen for the first time in decades and reached the conclusion half an hour into the screening.

Duvall, who died in 2024 at age 75, was in her late 20s when she made the film, based on Stephen King's novel. She endured a punishing schedule of retakes with Nicholson and Kubrick that left her emotionally drained. Her performance drew mixed and often negative reviews. It even earned her a Razzie Award nomination, which was later rescinded.

The takeaway: audiences and critics missed what Duvall was actually doing on screen.

What does Duvall's performance actually accomplish?

Against the backdrop of a horror movie, Duvall delivered a powerful, grounded portrayal of Wendy, a woman trapped in a marriage with an increasingly dangerous man. Nearly half a century after the film premiered in 1980, Nicholson's acting reads "a little clownish," the reviewer writes. His Jack Torrance is "a B-movie monster" who smacks his lips, leers at the camera and delivers "Here's Johnny!" style catchphrases with relish.

The contrast carries the film. "It's hard to see any of this working or feeling remotely scary if Duvall hadn't played the business perfectly straight," the review states. "It's her performance that anchors the sense that this is happening in the real world, with real stakes."

The realistic horror begins before any ghost appears. Wendy's husband is an unemployed former teacher, an aspiring author with writer's block and a history of alcoholism. He dislocated their son Danny's shoulder in a drunken rage. As the reviewer puts it: "This woman isn't afraid of ghosts. She's afraid of the man sleeping in her bed."

Is Wendy a victim or a proto-action hero?

The reviewer admits remembering Wendy as "a dreary victim, a kind of punching bag" — cringing, shrieking, fleeing, her "remarkable American Gothic face twisted into a scream" on the film's poster. The rewatch overturns that memory.

After the family arrives at the haunted Overlook Hotel, Wendy proves the competent one. Jack is the official caretaker, but while he gripes and sulks, Wendy handles the heating system, stays in touch with the forest rangers, monitors the weather, cooks and learns the lay of the land. The list is concrete:

• Maintains the hotel's heating system
• Keeps radio contact with forest rangers
• Tracks the weather
• Cooks and manages the household
• Learns the hotel's layout

That competence sets up what follows. As Jack changes, Wendy grows wary, watches Danny more closely and arms herself with a baseball bat. In their first fight she knocks Jack out cold, drags his dead weight down a flight of stairs and locks him in a freezer.

"Your wife appears to be stronger than we imagined, Mr. Torrance, somewhat more resourceful," the ghost Grady mocks. "She seems to have gotten the better of you." Duvall makes that strength believable, the review argues — one year after Sigourney Weaver played the hero in "Alien" and four years before Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor in "The Terminator."

Why the ending belongs to Wendy

The screenplay, co-authored by Diane Johnson, sets audiences up to expect Danny's supernatural powers — or Dick Hallorann's rescue — to save the day. Instead, it falls to Wendy. In the final scenes, Nicholson's Jack shouts, smashes doors and murders Hallorann with an axe, but he never lays a hand on his wife or son. Duvall's Wendy, the reviewer concludes, "stays one step ahead of him, showing main character energy right to the end."

The case for reappraising Duvall's performance — once marked for a Razzie — now rests on rewatching the film with her, not Nicholson's, showmanship at the center.