The Shining - Film Review

The Shining

Fig 1

The shining is was a film directed by Stanely Kubrick and is a 1980 British/American horror film starring Jack Nickolson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers. Unlike most horror films where the actors are situated in a small environment, this film is situated in a huge hotel called the Overlook Hotel. It is normally a busy and popular ski resort, but for winter is shut. “Kubrick gives us the eerie, colossal, brilliantly lit spaces of the Overlook Hotel” Due to the weather conditions being too bad, and the place gets snowed in.


Jack Torrence has been hired by the owner of the Hotel to look after the place over the Christmas months, this is just to make sure nothing happens to the expensive building and if there are any issues with the place for him to contact them. However, he is warned by the manager that an incident occurred that in this huge hotel a caretaker just like he came and went slowly insane murdering both his twin daughters and his wife in the process in cold blood using an axe. Jack denies that this could ever happen to him as he loves his family and said that he’ll be just fine as he has work to keep him occupied anyway. He travels with his wife Wendy and Son Danny to the hotel in their car before the winter storms arrive and make themselves comfortable in their new setting.

Fig 2

Using Steadicam technology Kubrick is able to film Danny riding down the long corridors using his trike, as you hear the drumming of the plastic wheels on the wooden floor turn silent as he pedals over the multitude of carpets, giving a drumming and awareness to the vastness of this place. The hotel is pretty much symmetrical in all of the corridors which adds to the never-ending cycle of rooms and corridors, there are “dozens of empty rooms, ominously huge windows, knives all over the kitchen, and a maze on the front lawn” Danny also has this unusual talent called Shining and he knows that bad things have happened in this place, he sees visions of the two twins and for a brief second where they were murdered. And starts chanting redrum over and over.

Fig 3

Slowly it is made apparent that the husband is losing his mind and the wife trying to keep herself and Danny safe lock him in one of the stock rooms in the kitchen, she can’t contact anyone as he’s destroyed the communications device and removed the wires from the vehicles.


She is in a desperate trance of panic dancing around the halls in a doll-like fashion; realising what’s happening and when reflected on a mirror her son’s words of redrum written in lipstick on the door saying, MURDERER, she panics. Jack starts axing down the doors to their room where Wendy and Danny take cover in the bathroom, locking the doors from him. Danny escapes out of the window but she can’t fit. Jack is distracted by Dick Hallorann coming into the hotel he also has the shining ability so knew something was wrong. And he also looks after the place in the summer months. Jack swiftly ends him with an axe to the chest and chases down Danny into a maze. Covering his tracks Danny outsmarts his maddened father and escapes with Wendy on Dicks Snowmobile. In the morning, Jack is found frozen solid and dead in the maze.


This film was a very new perspective on horror with the large open spaces and intensifying music during the calmest parts of the film to keep the audience hooked to the screen “complex musical textures of György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki don't even offer room to breathe, and the disorientation causes the mind to grasp for gravity.” it wasn’t always the most action packed but was definitely and intense film to watch.


Reference

Bradshaw, P. (2012) ‘The shining – review’ In: The Guardian [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/01/the-shining-review (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


Henderson, E. (2007) The shining | film review. At: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-shining (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


Maslin, J. (2016) Movie review - - THE SHINING [online] At: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1738E270BC4B51DFB366838B699EDE (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


At: https://fallingfromvertigo.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the-shining-001.jpg (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


At: http://www.halloweenforum.com/attachments/halloween-props/222001d1412790847-easy-shining-prop-frozen-jack-torrance-real_jack.jpg (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


At: https://38.media.tumblr.com/1bbaa3669361aebe86b1fbf3d723d015/tumblr_nlyfoh3rDo1qbsne0o1_500.gif (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


Citations, Quotes & Annotations


Bradshaw, P. (2012) ‘The shining – review’ In: The Guardian [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/01/the-shining-review (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


(Bradshaw, 2012)


Henderson, E. (2007) The shining | film review. At: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-shining (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


(Henderson, 2007)


Maslin, J. (2016) Movie review - - THE SHINING [online] At: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1738E270BC4B51DFB366838B699EDE (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


(Maslin, 2016)


At: https://fallingfromvertigo.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the-shining-001.jpg (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


At: http://www.halloweenforum.com/attachments/halloween-props/222001d1412790847-easy-shining-prop-frozen-jack-torrance-real_jack.jpg (Accessed on 19 December 2016)


At: https://38.media.tumblr.com/1bbaa3669361aebe86b1fbf3d723d015/tumblr_nlyfoh3rDo1qbsne0o1_500.gif (Accessed on 19 December 2016)