*MAJOR SPOILERS*
So I found it guys. I found a good Kubrick film. Now the real question is, how good is this horror film from one of my least favorite directors?
The Shining is a 1980 drama/horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, and is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name. The film stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crothers. The Shining follows a small family as they head to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.
Okay, I’m impressed. From the opening shot of this film, I automatically knew I’d love this film. But that’s the thing, this doesn’t feel at all like a Kubrick film at all. It doesn’t follow the “Kubrick” structure of three acts that have nothing to do with each other, and the pacing isn’t absolutely horrific. It almost feels like Kubrick learned from his mistakes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket and finally made a good film with an overall good feel to it.
One of the best features of this movie has to be the cinematography and sound design. Starting with its visuals, we open with a handful of beautiful shots flying over lakes and mountains as we follow the small little car to the Overlook Hotel. Everything we need to see, and need to know about the hotel is shown to us within the first 15 minutes or so of the film. That’s probably what I love so much about this film is that you understand the design of the hotel for the most part. You sort of get an idea about where everything is just by the tour Jack and Wendy go through, as well as the constant tracking shots shown throughout this film. Not only are the visuals amazing with its beautiful camera work, but also the sound design. Wow, was this a fantastic and creepy addition to the film. The use of sound with Danny’s small tricycle going from carpet to wood, to carpet to wood, is fantastic as it helps push a great amount of stress onto the audience. Kubrick uses the sound to represent a heartbeat later on in the film, and is such a creative way of building suspense. Not to mention the use of visuals and sound throughout the long takes of Danny riding his bike has to be one of the most recognizable scenes in cinematic history.
But sound and camera work isn’t the only thing that makes Kubrick’s The Shining shine, as the characters and acting throughout this masterpiece in modern horror are phenomenal, and a great representation of what kind of talent Kubrick had at his disposal. Both Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall were great, but the real star was Danny Lloyd. This kid was great for his age, and I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen him in anything else. The way he represents two characters is great as we get a good distinction between good Danny, and possessed Danny. Not to mention the point of view that audience sees when we are thrown into Danny’s perspective is honestly horrific. We constantly see clips of the future which provides awesome foreshadowing, and adds a great amount of suspense to the plot. Of course Shelley Duvall’s character was extremely convincing, and gave the audience someone to relate themselves to, but Jack Nicholson really stole the show on this one. His character is eerie from the beginning, and is just a creepy guy in general. Although my one complaint is that we don’t get enough story to back up his change from normal to psychotic, I feel like most of the characters throughout this film are very well fleshed out and have great story behind them.
So coming from a Stephen King novel I should expect this film to have a great story to it, and that it does! The pacing to this film is great, and although sometimes it slows down, it needs to as the slow pacing adds suspense to the overall story. The only major complaint I had about the story in this film was that it didn’t give us enough backstory to truly understand why Jack went mad. This wasn’t detrimental to the overall film, but I feel like a little more information would have helped the audience have a better understanding of how things turned out the way that they did. Another key party to the film that I also wasn’t a huge fan of was the way that Jack died. I understand the symbolic nature of his death, but it just seems like it wasn’t a deserved death, in a sense. I almost felt like it was anticlimactic in a way.
Overall, The Shining was a fantastic horror film from Kubrick, if not one of the best films in its genre. The Shining has almost everything going for it, great cinematography, great sound design, great suspense, great characters, with the only negative being (personally) an anticlimactic ending. But in the end I decided to give The Shining “Golden V’s” on theVade Review Bar. Not only is this one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen, but it is also one of the best films I’ve ever seen. So congrats Kubrick, you’ve made a fantastic film. Too bad it’s the only shining star in list of duds.
