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The Shining
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
You’d think I would have seen this by now. Turns out that while it’s not quite Casabanca, I already knew a bunch of the bits and scenes from pop cultural osmosis, completely out of order. It’s longer than I had realized, and a much slower build.
It’s a very well-done horror film, mostly because Jack Nicholson is a very scary man. (Jethrien described him as “an alien in an Edgar suit”.) It’s easy to tell why this movie is considered seminal, though a number of the tropes it uses are hackneyed 35 years later (Magical Negro, Indian Burial Ground, Axe Murderer, Room Full of Crazy…).
There were definitely parts that actively irritated me—a character who was killed really should have been the Big Damn Hero—and parts that apparently were explained in the book but really made no sense in the movie. Or, as I asked when Wendy is running around in a panic and seeing all manner of craziness, “After everything you’ve seen, the random gay furries are what freaks you out?”
I also noted that there’s only really one point where the supernatural aspect of the story has to be real, and not just a figment of everyone’s addled minds: When Jack is released from the food locker. Without that bit, the “everyone’s just crazy” explanation would have remained open. I think that irritated me, too.
Jethrien commented on Shelley Duval’s wardrobe and, like the outfits in Heathers, we have to assume that the clothes send a specific message that we can no longer understand, outside of their original cultural context. Was she supposed to be fashionable or unfashionable, and in what way?
And the score is really what makes it a horror film. The recut “Shining” trailer that made the rounds a few years ago made it clear how much of the movie was either innocuous or could be done as heartwarming when cut differently and without the freakout music.
Overall: It’s a classic horror film for a reason.
You’d think I would have seen this by now. Turns out that while it’s not quite Casabanca, I already knew a bunch of the bits and scenes from pop cultural osmosis, completely out of order. It’s longer than I had realized, and a much slower build.
It’s a very well-done horror film, mostly because Jack Nicholson is a very scary man. (Jethrien described him as “an alien in an Edgar suit”.) It’s easy to tell why this movie is considered seminal, though a number of the tropes it uses are hackneyed 35 years later (Magical Negro, Indian Burial Ground, Axe Murderer, Room Full of Crazy…).
There were definitely parts that actively irritated me—a character who was killed really should have been the Big Damn Hero—and parts that apparently were explained in the book but really made no sense in the movie. Or, as I asked when Wendy is running around in a panic and seeing all manner of craziness, “After everything you’ve seen, the random gay furries are what freaks you out?”
I also noted that there’s only really one point where the supernatural aspect of the story has to be real, and not just a figment of everyone’s addled minds: When Jack is released from the food locker. Without that bit, the “everyone’s just crazy” explanation would have remained open. I think that irritated me, too.
Jethrien commented on Shelley Duval’s wardrobe and, like the outfits in Heathers, we have to assume that the clothes send a specific message that we can no longer understand, outside of their original cultural context. Was she supposed to be fashionable or unfashionable, and in what way?
And the score is really what makes it a horror film. The recut “Shining” trailer that made the rounds a few years ago made it clear how much of the movie was either innocuous or could be done as heartwarming when cut differently and without the freakout music.
Overall: It’s a classic horror film for a reason.