OVERLAY REPORT

At the climax of Stanley Kubrick’s *The Shining* (1980), the main character, **Jack Torrance**, goes into the **Overlook Hotel's giant hedge maze** located on the hotel grounds. ### Where He Goes After being freed from the kitchen pantry by the ghost of the former caretaker, Delbert Grady, Jack murders Dick Hallorann in the hotel lobby and then pursues his son, **Danny**, out into the sub-zero temperatures and blinding snow of the **outdoor hedge maze**. While the film's exterior hotel shots were filmed at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, the maze itself was a massive set constructed on soundstages at Elstree Studios in England, utilizing 900 tons of salt and crushed Styrofoam to simulate a winter blizzard. ### Why He Goes There Jack’s pursuit into the maze is driven by a combination of supernatural possession and a complete psychological breakdown: * **To "Correct" His Family:** Under the influence of the Overlook Hotel's malevolent spirits, Jack believes he must "correct" his wife and son. This directive comes specifically from the ghost of Delbert Grady, who tells Jack that Danny’s "shining" ability and Wendy’s interference are a threat to the hotel's interests. * **The Pursuit of Danny:** Jack chases Danny into the maze because the boy is his primary target. Danny is the one with the strongest "Shine," making him the hotel's ultimate prize. Jack follows Danny into the maze, wielding an axe and shouting for him, convinced he has the boy trapped. * **Outsmarted by Danny:** Danny, familiar with the maze from playing in it earlier in the film, realizes he is leaving footprints in the snow for Jack to follow. He cleverly backtracks over his own prints and hides, leading Jack deeper into the labyrinth while Danny escapes to find his mother. ### The Outcome Because of his deteriorating mental state and the physical exhaustion of his "limp" (sustained when Wendy hit him with a baseball bat earlier), Jack becomes hopelessly lost in the twisting corridors of the maze. While Wendy and Danny escape in Hallorann’s snowcat, Jack is left behind. The film famously concludes this sequence with a shot of Jack’s **frozen corpse** the following morning, slumped against the maze wall. ### Key Detail: Film vs. Book It is worth noting that in Stephen King's original novel, the climax does **not** take place in a hedge maze (which featured topiary animals that came to life). Instead, Jack goes to the **hotel's boiler room** because he has forgotten to dump the steam pressure. In the book, the hotel explodes; in Kubrick’s film, the maze serves as a visual metaphor for Jack’s mental entrapment, leading to his icy death rather than a fiery one.