Movie Review: The Shining (1980)

Finally! The moment does arise! I'm finally going to talk about The Shining. This is a review I've been wanting to write for so long now and just yesterday I watched the abbreviated version of the film on Netflix. I'm going to make this review mainly for the entire feature film, but I'll talk about everything. Also, just a heads up, from now on my reviews are going to have a star rating and a letter grading next to them. It allows me to express my feelings on a film more evenly and it's just FUN. The Shining is a 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, and stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crothers. The movie focuses on a small family who decide to take care of a hotel during the closed and vacation season. The isolation mounts and mounts and mounts until Jack (Nicholson) hits his breaking point. I love this movie. The Shining is one of the greatest movies ever made and is one of my personal favorite films. It's SO VERY scary and it will give you nightmares, but holy crap if you haven't seen this, well,...where you been? This is a great movie for a number of reasons, but let's talk about the acting. Nicholson is perfect for this role. His personality in real life fits so well into this character that it's hard to separate his character from himself. It's a fantastic, bold, risky performance that lives in the classic and nostalgic hallways forever. Shelley Duvall is also surprisingly scary because her facial expressions and reactions to the haunted hotel are so believable. Her acting in this movie is very physical and it works from our perspective as well. Danny Lloyd as Danny was fantastic casting and he himself is also very scary. Then there's Scatman Crothers who's one of my favorite characters in this entire movie. Another character who seems a little darkened and even creepy. That brings me to my first pro about this flick, which is that no character is ever morally innocent. Often times Stephen King (the author) writes stories where no character is good or bad. Everyone just falls into the grey area. That's what works about this movie. It's uneasy and hard to watch because we never believe that anybody on camera is fully good. Their morals are obstructed and twisted which makes this movie very dark, eerie, and suspenseful. Then there's the scary aspect. This is the second scariest movie I have ever seen (The Exorcist is number one) and part of the reason it's scary is because of the way it's edited. This movie doesn't use a score increase to indicate when a scare is about to happen. The musical number is great for this film, but the scary elements just appear on screen without warning. That's uneasy as heck and sometimes the best horror movies are the "quiet" ones that sneak up on you. Now I won't go too in depth with this, but there's an entire body of critics and literature analysts who have researched very extensively into this film. The movie Room 237 is an entire documentary that fully explores the hidden meaning behind this film. If you haven't seen that it's very cool, but I will definitely say that The Shining has fascinating color contrast. Even just looking at the pattern on the carpet brings chills to my spine. This film was colored in such a way that it's actually scary. Red on white is a big one. It's a very visual movie and while the dialogue and performances are all excellent, it's not that aspect that I've taken away each time I see this masterpiece of a film. Now looking back on this film, it's hard to pinpoint flaws (if there are even any of them). I will say that I couldn't find a single one. The Shining doesn't really have any flaws on it's own two feet. King himself denounced this movie and having read that novel, I can honestly say he does have a point. This movie's tone is slightly different than that of the Stephen King tale. Overall, The Shining is scary, brilliantly directed, and is one of the greatest films ever put to cinema. Four stars= A+