The Shining

Not going to lie, I got pretty excited when the first movie listed for this week’s review choices was The Conjuring, and the fact that it didn’t make the cut was disappointing, but I went for what I thought would be the next best thing.

I have to say, The Shining was better than I expected it to be. While it is not one of my favorite movies, there were many parts to appreciate and others…not so much. I was afraid I would be surrounded by bad acting aside from Jack Nicholson, who, once again, had an excellent performance, especially considering the scene at the hotel with the corporate employees felt tasteless, as well as the mother’s acting early on. However, acting only improved, and kudos the child actors who were certainly on their game. But that’s not all!

The Shining was particularly heavy on one theme: Man vs. Himself. I think that’s pretty obvious. There’s a whole lot of mental struggling in this movie. At first I thought the music was out of sync with the actions of the characters, but I realized that it seemed fitting because it matched the mental state of each of the characters that particular scene was focusing on. Even if it looked temporarily happy on the outside, the music was dark because of the struggle of Danny and Tony, Wendy and her (what used to be) irrational fear of Jack’s potential abuse, or Jack and his desperate need for both attention and isolation together. Anything that had to do with the characters or their connection to the shining was a mental struggle, and they were internal in that character specifically. Jack Nicholson and the rest of the cast (but mostly Nicholson), portrayed the mental decay in such a successful way that the performances were what kept me interested. The movie opens with Jack in a suit having a discussion about near success in his future, and yet Jack’s last lines go a little something like “Wyaghahnyaghahgygh” while he limps and angrily flails an axe until he has nothing left in him. You can see the insanity in his face quite clearly actually.

I said I thought it was much better than I expected it to be for a reason. Considering this movie was released in 1980, I thought it would be safe to assume it would fall short in some areas of production from movies today, but this movie was on par with many films of today. I was extremely impressed with cinematography. It looked gorgeous at the beginning with the scenic shots, but at the same time conveyed the isolation they were going for. I was especially impressed with the first tricycle scene in the hallway. The fact that it was one continuous shot would still be challenging to pull of today, and the lack of shaky cam made the journey at Danny’s level feel like a really great scene.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t scared. It was a little predictable, and they never quite built up enough angst, because they were too busy building up the angst of the characters on screen instead of the people in the audience. I want to avoid saying cliché in this case because it definitely has been an inspiration to a lot of scary movies for today, and considering the reputation of horror movies today it hasn’t been done as well since, but even though they were setting the stage for the genre, it still had places to go yet, and there were ways to improve. It also did not help that they tried to distract attention away from what would be considered the “main” storyline, of many. I’m all for complex stories, but they have to been done well, and that means not to go overboard with it too. The Shining raised a lot of questions, and although I was able to create my own answers to the questions, instead of feeling like I had any support to my theories, it felt like it was all just rampant speculation, and that I could be flat out wrong. Overall I’d give this movie a 3.5/5 because it was decent and intriguing at least, and certainly has become iconic (and I never find it nice to bash an iconic movie, not to say that my rating was generous, but, eh). The questions posed in the movie felt like they were meant to have answers but instead were just left hanging, and there were too many of them. But the biggest question I have is still: Who was Dodd?