Review of The Shining (1980) by Josh C — 19 Oct 2013

All work and no play makes the greatest haunted house film of all time. So this is about the Torrance family, who has been hired by the remote Overlook Hotel to perform maintenance over the harsh winter.

In the middle of a snow storm for the ages, the father (Jack Nicholson), starts to go a little stir crazy (to say the least), all the while the psychic son (Danny Lloyd) begins to see hints of the hotel's past.

To get into the Halloween spirit, I watched this for the first time in over five years, and I gotta say, it is still as unnerving as ever. This has everything to do with versatile director Stanley Kubrick, who is a renowned perfectionist; he has such an eye for detail that is prominently featured in all of his films, and here is no different.

He has that psychotic brand of directing that yields brilliant films, and God bless him for it. You hear stories of him behind the camera, like him doing retakes of scenes that numbered into the hundreds, and it really ends up playing a large part in the psychology of the performances captured onscreen.

The Shining is jam packed with memorable scenes: from the woman in the bathtub to Danny on his big wheel, from the murdered twins holding hands to the climactic door chopping scene, you really do walk away retaining so much from this film.

The attention to detail approaches OCD levels, the sound queues are supremely affecting, and there really is no other film quite like it.