The Shining

LOWERED FROM 5 STARS TO 4.5 STARS Wow I did not expect me to take this away from my top 20. In October I will revisit this film and then I will see if I still stand on the same floor. But I think the script is just great but not AS great as in my first watch. I think this film has a lot of shifts in pacing. Like for example a lot of scary and fast-paced action sequences suddenly shift to slowburn scenes when we are so close to getting the pay off from the entire slow build up. So I think this film doesn't give you that pay off the audience deserves. The dialogue is good but then again nothing over the top. I think I have seen just way better dialogues in a lot of other films like Persona so this doesn't reach that 5-star category. Some parts just make absolutely no sense. Why would Wendy go to sleep after having the most traumatic encounter ever with his husband. Like we see this character literally being sleeping beauty when she just almost got brutally murdered and her husband said "I'm just gonna bash your brains in". Like okay? I also find Wendy's character to be very bland serving little to none actual character in her. Like she just doesn't seem realistic. Her dialogues are often just bland and she's just not an interesting character to me at all. What keeps this film in the 4.5 category is the fact that despite these critiques I think this film has great acting performance, is weird enough for me, Stanley Kubrick's insane directing, atmosphere and its thrilling third act. The third act is so atmospheric and tense. I've loved watching it since I was a kid because it's just so tense and the snowy night and claustrophobic setting gives so much points to the third act. And then the atmosphere is so great with the snowy blizzard, the hotel and the entire setting of the film. The kitchen serves an great eerie and cold atmosphere within it especially when Jack is stuck in the food storage room. The whole hotel feels so cozy but yet it fits the horror atmosphere flawlessly. The Shining did not hold up sadly but I did have a great time watching this. But also thanks to this film it reminded me that I need to watch A Clockwork Orange again because I love that film to death. 8.8