The Shining
I not the biggest fan of horror, but The Shining grabbed me from the start and didn’t let me go till the end. Every character feels mysterious and hard to read and with each scene you get more questions than answers, its such a weird lingering feeling you’ll keep throughout the film.
The score is also extremly interessting, its not there to to underline the film but rather its a part of it. It tells you how anxious to feel and keeps you on edge. The movie doesn’t make a secret out of what will happen next, it sort of tells you the whole plot. So you mostly know what will happen you just don’t know when or how, and that tension carries through to the very end.
For me, Jack isn’t “corrupted” by the Overlook. He’s already someone who can do terrible things, and the hotel just gives him the room to let it out. Selling his soul for a drink is his choice, not the hotel’s, the Overlook just gives him the option. I also liked how the film hints on the cycles of violence (thats how I understood the last shown picture) and about ego. Artits, writers in our case, blaming others for their own failures and seeing themselves as superior, while being the opposite is shown pretty clearly in this film. On that note I noticed that eventough Jack is hired to keep the hotel running, it’s Wendy that is doing the actual work while he "produces" pages of madness and then blames her for ruining his dream.
Of course The Shining isn’t a cheap jump-scare movie. The horror comes from the camera, the sound, the space and the plot, which makes it much more intense. This movie doesn’t fall under the recommendation category for me, it didn’t rub me the right way... But i believe the movie does exactly what it wants to do, so I’ll give it 4.5 stars. Jack Nicholson has the times of his life acting as Jack Torrance and I’m here for it.