The Shining review

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.

SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.

THE SHINING

Why The Shining to kick things off? I wanted to start with a film that even people who don’t like horror films enjoy. At least that’s what I’ve found. I watched The Shining for the first time when I was 13 or 14 years old. If anyone remembers ABC used to have a late night movie on Saturday nights (yes I’m dating myself) I remember turning it on and the first scene I saw was when Wendy finds Jack’s writing. Stacks and stacks of paper with nothing on it but “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. I was mesmerized. I had to find the TV page the next day to see what movie I had watched. I’ve probably seen it 40+ plus times since then.

The Shining is a film based on the novel by Stephen King – well mostly but we’ll get to that later.  Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crothers, It’s the story of a man named Jack Torrance who takes the job of the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. He is a struggling writer/teacher who brings his wife Wendy and son Danny with him. We learn Jack has had some alcohol problems and the family needs to hit the reset button. What better than to be completely isolated from society in 10 feet of snow to fix your family life right? Well as you know things don’t go so well. We learn early on from the hotel’s Chef Dick Halloran that he and Danny have what he calls “shining”. Two people can carry on a conversation telepathically as he puts it “without ever opening our mouths”. Once the ghosts start showing up and Jack starts to lose it Danny uses the shining to call Dick for help. He makes it all the way to the hotel from Florida only to get an axe in the chest from Jack. Wendy and Danny try to escape and we get a great final scene of Jack utterly determined to hunt down and kill his son in the hotel’s snowy hedge maze. Danny outsmarts him and the final shot of a frozen Jack is maybe the best moment in the film.

Stanley Kubrick directed the film and most people love it. I mentioned we’d get back to Stephen King’s novel. I know not everyone has read the book so I won’t ruin anything for you. King is not a huge fan of Kubrick’s film. There are some big differences in the film and novel and I totally understand why he feels that way. I love the book and the film. In 1997 King helped produce an ABC miniseries of The Shining that was more faithful to his novel. I won’t state my opinion of that miniseries but if you must know more about it here you go - LINK

I will give the miniseries props for filming it at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. which is where King stayed and was supposedly inspired to write the book.

Stanley Kubrick is my favorite Filmmaker of all time. His work was game changing in the film landscape. 2001: A Space Odyssey blew people’s minds when it was released in 1968. He had lenses made for him by NASA to shoot scenes in Barry Lyndon using nothing but candlelight. Again he used mostly Christmas lights to shoot Eyes Wide Shut. Then we have The Shining. From the start you know this is going to be a great film. The helicopter shots of Jack’s Beetle driving on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park are pretty epic. The story the Hotel Manager tells him about the previous caretaker who killed his family and himself is pretty spooky and is a good omen of what’s to come. The film takes place in the middle of winter and it really does feel that way. You can FEEL that cold and snow and the isolation. Kubrick used enormous lights on cranes to blast light into the set windows to get that harsh winter sun look. The Shining is filled with great scenes, lines, and moments – “I like you, Lloyd. I always liked you. You were always the best of 'em. Best god-damn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine. Or Portland, Oregon, for that matter” - which you’d think is a nod to Stephen King being from Maine and that the Timberline Lodge in Oregon was used at the exterior shots for the Overlook Hotel but what makes the film SO great is the use of the Steadicam. Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam in the mid 70s and it was used well in Marathon Man and Rocky, but Kubrick took it up a notch. He shot almost the whole film with it. The most notable being the scenes following behind Danny when he’s riding his big wheel throughout the hotel. They were able to mount the cam just above the ground to achieve this. Love those scenes. Great audio too with the sound of the bike over the carpet, then the floor, then the carpet, then the floor. Also used incredibly well at the end of the movie in the hedge maze.

Of course we can’t talk about The Shining without discussing all the conspiracy theories right? Any fan of the movie knows it has a ton of alternative meanings, rumors, etc. There’s the theory the film wants to shed light on the slaughter of Native Americans by showing the artwork and design of the hotel along with the Hotel Manager mentioning that they had to repel attacks while building the Overlook and that it was built on “an Indian Burial Ground”. Another theory is that the Government hired Kubrick to shoot the footage of the moon landing in 1969 – telling us Neil Armstrong never did it. You can see Tang in a lot of the shots in the movie, Danny has rockets on his clothes, and room 237 – 237,000 miles from the earth to the moon. There are a lot more out there and if you really want to get into that watch a documentary called Room 237 - LINK. I have seen it and personally I thought it was WAY too out there but I’m sure some of you will enjoy it.

So in the end The Shining is for me an incredible film. When people ask me what I think of it I use the word hypnotic. I can’t turn it off. As I said earlier it’s a horror film that even folks who don’t like horror can enjoy. Heck, even people who had their friend sit on them to make them watch it enjoyed it!  It’s become a part of our culture. How famous is the “Here’s Johnny!!” line? Remember on Friends when Joey had to put the copy of the book in the freezer because it scared him? One of the coolest things I own is a poster of The Shining that I was lucky enough to have signed by Lisa and Louise Burns who played the Grady twins in the movie. If I’ve given you nothing else to enjoy from this blog then I’ll give you this - watch “The Shinning” from one of The Simpsons Halloween episodes. Beyond funny - LINK.

I could talk about The Shining forever – “Come play with us Danny, forever, and ever, and ever…” There are certainly a few things in The Shining that make you scratch your head. What about the shot of the guy with someone dressed in what looks like a bear costume?? As Eli Roth said “You know there’s something going on and it can’t be good”. I think people always wonder about the ending. The final shot of Jack in the photo dated July 4th, 1921. Kubrick said Jack was a reincarnation of previous caretakers but of course it’s open to interpretation…Whenever a big snowstorm is coming I make sure I know where my DVD copy of The Shining is. I put it in the player as soon as the snow starts to fly and I sit back and enjoy.