The Blog
This blog will be all about film reviews. I'm going to be watching a lot of movies, writing reviews, and hopefully not spoiling any movies you plan to watch.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Verdict: Thumbs Up Set in the mountains of Colorado at the beautiful Overlook Hotel, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining captivates audiences as the Torrance family struggles to keep their lives together. The Shining is about Jack Torrance and his struggles in the Overlook Hotel. He is hired as caretaker of the hotel for the seven months when the hotel is shut down over the winter. Jack is warned of a previous caretaker who went crazy during the winter and slaughtered his family before taking his own life. Jack laughs this off. When the hotel shuts down for the winter, Jack moves in with his wife Wendy and son Danny. All starts well but soon, Jack begins to change and become aggressive; mysterious things begin to occur in the hotel, and Wendy soon fears for her life. Kubrick spends most of the film working to make the audience feel the way he believes the story warrants. In the opening scenes when Jack is interviewing for the job of caretaker, Kubrick makes the interview feel extremely uncomfortable, as if something is not quite right. He holds the camera on various characters far longer than normal, after they have finished talking. It makes the audience want the camera angle to change, want the status quo to be restored. Little details like this make the viewer feel uncomfortable. When Jack is driving his family up to the hotel on closing day, when he shouts at Danny and Wendy, it feels less like they are a family and more like a teenage couple that is having relationship problems. This feel persists throughout the film. Where Kubrick had some of his greatest influence on emotion was when Danny was riding his tricycle around the hotel. As he turns the corner, he comes face to face with The Twins. As he watches, he sees them flash between just standing and lying on the floor, bloodied and mutilated by the former caretaker. Danny covers his eyes in terror and slowly moves his fingers apart to peak and see if the girls are still there. That moment in the film connects with every single person that watches the movie. Everyone knows that feeling, everyone has done that as a kid, covering their eyes and then carefully peaking through your fingers. That shot is where everyone feels that, and we all instinctively feel that terror that we've experienced. Kubrick is able to terrify the audience with a scene with no real scare to it. In the closing moments of the film, Kubrick is able to convey a sense of desperation that is almost inescapable. When Jack is hacking at the bathroom door and peaks his head in and utters those famous words "Heeeeeeeeres Johnny!", you can feel the hopelessness of Wendy, the cold hand gripping your heart as you know its all about to be over. Again when Jack is chasing Danny through the mazes, it feels like some nightmare that is slowly coming true. I was watching this in a cold basement and had felt cold the whole movie. But when Jack was hunting down Danny, and it felt like it was all about to come to an end, my hands were sweaty and my heart was beating quite quickly. Kubrick set out to control the audience's emotions, not give them a choice how they felt when they were watching The Shining. This isn't to say that Kubrick set out to make you feel the way you shouldn't during scenes, but to make the scenes more intense through the use of your own emotions. He succeeded brilliantly and in doing so, created one of the most iconic and scare horror movies ever.
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June 2018
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