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The
Shining |
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Author Jack Torrance is hired to look after The Overlook
Hotel during the winter. He takes his wife Wendy and son
Danny to the hotel, located at a snowy, isolated
mountain, to write on his new book. But Danny, who's a
psychic, knows something's wrong and that something
horrible is about to happen. Soon the terrifying past
of the hotel takes its course and begins to drive poor,
old Jack mad...
This is an immortal classic film by one of the greatest
film directors of all time, the late Stanley Kubrick.
This was his only horror film, and one can understand
why while you at the same time pity that he didn't make
any more. Because this is a really scary film on a
psychological level. It plays with your mind and lines
up several shockingly eerie images. Kubrick, who based
this film on a bestseller by Stephen King, doesn't just
wanna scare us - he wants us to feel scared, to give us
a feeling of being in that creepy hotel of horrors.
The film is somewhat overlong though and gets a bit
slow sometimes. Kubrick doesn't stress, which is partly
good because we get to know the characters and
experience what's happening to them, but the fact that
there's more talk than action is often effective but
also occassionally annoying. Many people probably think
this movie is just weird and strange - and it is, but
that's what makes it's scary, but some scenes and parts
of the film gets a bit too much and you can see why it
has been trimmed (even by Kubrick) several times.
When it comes the acting, there are no complaints. We
have Jack Nicholson in one of his best and most famous
performances in his career. His character starts
freaking out a bit too fast, despite the film's long
running time, but he still convinces as a man gone
insane. Debuting Danny Lloyd is terrific, one of the
best child actors of all time, creating an eerily
macabre performance. But the film's real show-stealer
is Shelley Duvall, as Wendy. As the more human contrast
in the odd family, Duvall manages to deliver a
believable performance of fear and anxiety, dealing
with her strange son and menatlly unstable husband.
She is one of the best and most underrated scream
queens in horror film history.
This also features one of the best horror movie
climaxes ever, with both the classic door-chopping
scene where the axe-wielding Nicholson sports his
famous (ad-libbed!) line "Heeeere's Johnny!" and the
exhausting chasing through the hedge maze. With
Kubrick's intense direction, the amazing photography
by John Alcott, the wide use of locations and eerie
score all makes up for one of the best and scariest
horror films ever.
Already in the first ten minutes we get to see a
sea of blood gushing out of an elevator, a creepy
scene later repeated several times in the film.
Other effective gore moments have the brief image of
the murdered children in the hallway and the naked
woman in the bathtub later revealed as an old, rotten
corpse (this is extremly freaky scene). The single
murder scene isn't very gory but very brutal and
shocking, as it comes from out of nowhere.
Kubrick mixes the original score, with some eerie
strings, weird sound effects and heartbeats with old,
classic music. It all works quite nicely and
effective, as the music gets larger and darker as
the story unfolds and Jack goes further into madness.
A great classic film, as good as is reputation.
Haven't read the book, so don't know if Stephen
King's readers will be disappointed (many were)
but it's still a great Kubrick film, a very
scary movie and extremly better than
the 1997 mini series.
Review
By: Slicer-dicer
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