The Shining (1980) review

The shining review (1980)

Heeeere's the review!!!

The story starts off with Jack gaining a new job to be a caretaker for the Overlook hotel. The manager warns him that hotel might be snowed in with the potential risk of cabin fever, which caused the previous caretaker went insane and murdered his wife and two daughters. After hearing that Jack accepts the job anyway. Back at their home jack's little boy, Danny, has visions of an elevator opening to revealing blood pouring out and was scared by it. Few days later both Jack and his family travel to the hotel, where they explore the facilities and even met the head chief and end up leaving Danny with him while they look around. The head chief understands that Danny has the power called the shining and tells him not to go to room 237. Months passed and family continues to live in the huge hotel and a mysterious ball rolls towards Danny, which caused him to find out room 237 was open. He enters the room while in the meantime Jack's wife, Wendy, hears her son scream and sees him standing in Jack’s work space. She noticed that Danny has a black mark around his neck and believes Jack was responsible for this and runs off to their room, Jack got angry and walks off to a bar, there he meets the ghostly bartender and orders a drink. Wendy runs back to him telling him that Jack saw a lady in room 237 that did strangled him. Jack redeems himself by cautiously entering room 237 alone. There he spotted a young women taking a bath. She slowly pulls back the curtain and gets out where Jack and the naked mysterious women kiss. He takes a glimpse of the reflection from the mirror that reveals that she is an old corpse she laughs madly and slowly chases him as he leaves out the room in a panicked state locking the door. Jack returns to his room where his wife awaits notifying that nothing was there. Few days later Wendy checks on her husband’s working area only to find out that all he types is “All work, No play makes Jack a dull boy” repeatedly. There he appeared behind her and slowly moves forward talking about how much she is thoughtless towards his feelings and how much pain she caused for him. She reacted by knocking him out with a bat and dragging his body to a locked cabernet. Meanwhile the head chief was on holiday but can pick up the signal that Danny is sending with his shining abilities, he rushes on the next plane to help. Jack wakes up with the ghost telling him he has to “correct them” so they broke him free and he hunts for them in the big huge hotel. The head chief appears with a vehicle only to be killed so that the family could escape and left behind only to freeze to death.

 

The closed off location is where this film does brilliantly as it gives of this feeling that the audience cannot escape from this film. The characters are simple and easy to understand however thanks to Jack Nickolson’s naturally creepy face; it already gives off the “I’m the villain in this movie” even though that the film hasn’t gone to the climax of the scene yet, even with that issue the film brilliantly showing the slow transformation from calm and collective to completely insane. Jack is fun to watch throughout the film, more so when he talks to the bartender. The soundtrack over the scenes was done beautify and obviously this film’s highest point. Even some points of the film can give off a feeling of music with ordinary objects that normally follows in musical films before the characters sing but in this film it is used to give a queasy feeling. An example of this is where the camera slowly reveals Jack throwing a tennis ball around the house that gives off a drum beat that sounds similar to a heartbeat. Another example is Danny riding this tricycle around the hotel rooms, the wheels on the bike on the hard floor can give off the sound of fast pasted drums and goes quite when he drives over the carpet, which can pass off as unnerving danger. 

 

Overall this film deserves 9.6/10. A fantastic film and worth the title of best horror of all time. The main issue is the strange ghostly stuff happening in the building seems to be real but it would have been more effective if it shows that Jack is truly insane by having anything ghostly in his head, which Interestingly brings up the fact that every time that the ghost appears there is a mirror in the room somewhere. It’s interesting to know little details like this about the structure of the building however the film seems to treat the audience with dignity by allowing them figure it out themselves. The mirror is a key item in this movie without being address as such by using it to spell “Murder” backwards from “Red rum” that Danny draws on the door and to show another side of Jack as they reveal the ghosts to him, where he can interact with them (whenever Jack talks to the ghosts there is always a mirror in the room) and it is also a nice change to have the main female character to not be a an attractive model, it makes the experience more real and therefore effective.  The acting is fun and entertaining to watch and the soundtrack is its strongest point.

 

 

“The Overlook, sacrilegiously built on an ancient Indian burial ground (a minor point for Kubrick and stolen by Poltergeist), is haunted by evil spirits. When Jack enters the sprawling ballroom, he is entering into the building's dark heart (possibly even Hell itself): "Your credits fine Mr Torrance." It's unclear whether it is Torrance's growing insanity that invites this or The Overlook itself taking possession of his soul. Grady, the previous caretaker, a man driven to slaughter his family (the source of Danny's disturbing second sight of the blue-dressed sisters) is another of Torrance's visitation states — "You have always been the caretaker," Grady suggests menacingly. The evil may have always been there in Jack, the
Overlook merely awakened it.” - Ian Nathan (Empire magazine) “Kubrick is after a cool, sunlit vision of hell, born in the bosom of the nuclear family, but his imagery--with its compulsive symmetry and brightness--is too banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls suspense.”- Dave Kehr (Chicago reader)

 

(http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=132700)

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/criticreviews)