In Kubrick's adaptation of the Shining, the moviegoer is misled into believing that Jack is "always" evil -- the apparent opposite of Stephen King's novel where Jack Torrence is an otherwise good father who is lured into evil by alcoholism and the possessed Overlook Hotel.

If you watch closely, however, in the opening sequences before "A MONTH LATER" -- there's hardly any indication that Jack is a mean abusive or that he really hates his son. He's cordial and friendly, with a bit of wry humour; the arm injury he did to Danny in the past is a rash moment, but listening to Wendy, he's made a valiant attempt to stay off of alcohol for five months straight, and counting.

What is evil? There are two key scenes of genuine evil I'll cite in separate movies. One is Disturbia, where Turner has poor Kale write a letter: "Now, you are really going to snap. First, you killed your buddy, because he was calling your girlfriend behind your back. And now we gotta bring your mom over here so you can slit her throat, because she just wouldn't stop blaming you for killing your dad. Sounds good?"

In The Gift, you have Gordo who successfully plots severing Simon's marriage and his career. The audience goes with it because, well, Gordo was bullied by Simon in high school. But this is just flimsy justification for the act of cruel vengeance he gets away with.

What these two things have in common is the saying: "The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn’t Exist."

That is exactly what happens in The Shining. Although the Overlook Hotel is not possessed by ghosts, nor is it "alive" per se, it is still an evil conduit. It lies to Jack through the projections of Grady and Lloyd into his mind (you cannot tell if something is a 'ghost' which others cannot see, or if it's just a mental projection only you can see like in The Outer Limits episode 'Decompression'), and it straight-out lies to the audience without you consciously noticing -- it took Rob Ager some effort to lay out a blueprint of the hotel which makes NO sense, but like every word out of Justin Trudeau's mouth in public, it's a maze of devilish lies to weave through.

What's the point? To frame Jack Torrence, figuratively and literally, by bringing out the worst tendencies in him to the front.

The Hotel, besides its ability to shine projections into the minds of its victims, also has the capability to move and batter things around, like framing Jack for the choking of Danny to Wendy ("Oh, Jack is a total abuser! He's continuing the cycle of family abuse!"), moving the locations of light switches and maze entrances when we're not looking, unlocking the pantry door for Jack under the guise of Grady.. even giving Jack a poisoned glass of Jack Daniel's [it's drinking this at timestamp 66:06 which results in pure evil seeping into Jack's body].

Even then, the most experienced film analyst is going to fall into the trap of making grandiose associations with "a cycle of family abuse, he's reincarnated from the past!" or "The Holocaust" or "American Indians mistreated" or even "Sigmund Freud - it was all psychological and there is no supernatural force!"

I've had experiences in the past where I've been abused by my fellow peers who were intelligent and cowardly enough to hide or disguise their evil -- I've seen HelenaLive (Greek streamer) who was raided by 4chan and made to look like she was always an unstable "poutana." I've read the reasoning put up on KiwiFarms where it is a God-given legal right to ridicule strangers on the internet to the point of abject intimidation (otherwise, you're just attacking Free Speech).. it's just complete nonsense, put up by a villain to justify their infamy. Likewise, the Overlook Hotel has movie reviewers barking up trees over obvious red herrings, left so that reviewers have the consoling illusion that they've academically grasped the movie, while failing to realise that they've missed the point, that they've been tricked.

Sadly, Rationality and Reason alone cannot deal with spiritual evil, when the Devil masterfully employs reason as his weapon to trick people into losing their souls, and ultimately their connection with God. "Strange Loops" as a logical concept exists in the first place because the wise come to realise that logic/reason is inevitably bound to contain inexplicable paradoxes when it comes to referencing itself [set theory].

"A story of the supernatural cannot be taken apart and analysed too closely, and wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn't lie in A, B, C, D, but in the feel of it."

Instead, it is human courage which is key to seeing past the maze of lies, and realising that above all else, The Shining is a tragedy where Jack Torrence is transformed from an ordinary father, a flawed man like any other, into a picture up forever on that wall to be pondered over as a supposed exemplar of evil, forever.