The Shining

Rating:
Summary: "Wendy, I'm home!"
Review: THE SHINING be a creepy, creepy, creepy movie! It scare the jibblies out of me!

It be a great classic!

Jack Nicholson be the perfect psycho!

The Overlook hotel be a scary place! The twin girls, the woman in bathtub.....

Although, it not much like the book, but it still be a great movie!

It be so very different from the book, is the only reason I is taking off 1 star!

Be doing yourself a favor and be ordering this scary work-of-art!

Bottom line.
READ THE BOOK, IT WONDERFUL!

Rating:
Summary: A possibility.
Review: Is it not possible that the Shining is in fact a send up of the horror genre by an increasingly cocky perfectionist in the waning years of his once brilliant career. For evidence of this, see The Amityville Horror for it's frame for frame prototype of the Shining's climactic scene in the bathroom, embellished comically by Nicholson's over the top and defining "here's Johnny" moment, which in itself looks like a stab at satire, a direct jab at James Brolin's character in T.A.H, and the seriousness therein as well as the unintentional humor in most Horror films. Kubrick does B-movie...sort of.

Rating:
Summary: SHINING IS DULL
Review: Just goes to show you that even Stanley Kubrick can get into something he can't master. I so anticipated this film I even held my nose and read the stupid novel. I like fright films and hoped that the Shining would equal or surpass the Haunting as the quintessential thinking mans horror.
Instead we got a Jack Nicholson movie.
I think Nicholson is one of the best if not THE best actor of my time and I enjoy his performance here but do you see what happened - the focus shifted to the films star because the directors performance went flat.
I was amazed that Kubrick chose to flat out show you the "horrors" instead of suggest them which would have enabled them to grow dimensionally in the imagination of the viewer. Maybe some people find those little girls disturbing or the gallons of blood but if you don't where else can you go?
The atmosphere was more institutional feeling than frightening and that silly voice repeating "redrum" ( an asinine devise old as the hills - spelling a key word backwards ) actually made me laugh.
If you're thinking of seeing this on the strength of Kubricks name I suppose there'll be no stopping you but think Barry Lyndon not Clcokwork Orange.
If your a Stephen King fan you'll love it - it's a total bore.

Rating:
Summary: "Wendy! I'm home."
Review: Brilliant in every way. No offense to fans of the novel, but Kubrick's changing of King's book elements is not only thoughtful but, in a few cases, preferred. Who wants the stupid topiary animals anyway? The way the hedge maze is employed throughout the film is wonderful. The ending shots in the hedge are unforgettable. John Alcott's excellent photography complements and gives direction to Kubrick's deliberate pacing. And Nicholson's characterization of Torrance's decent into madness is fantastic. Kubrick, always with a feel for æsthetics, employs music throughout that creates real atmosphere. The Bartók in the hedge. The Penderecki in the hallway murder scene. Simply splendid! Another fine, thoughtful, highly personal Kubrick flick. Mais certainement!

(P.S. - Stop comparing King's remake to this.)

Rating:
Summary: Come fly with me...
Review: This review is going to be a metaphor for the movie, in that the title has little to do with the content, it's overly long, it's repetitive, and people are going to be divided as to whether it's great or just a complete waste of time and talent.

So what's the film about? Is it Jack's slow descent into madness? Well, no, he's a psycho from the start, evinced by Wendy saying in such an obviously ominous way that he once dislocated his son's shoulder in anger. Indeed, his manic grin and arched eyebrows don't become more manic and more arched as the film progresses - it is obvious from the film's opening scenes that he is going snap and try to kill his family. Resultingly, there is no tension whatsoever.

Is it, therefore, about a would-be author suffering writer's block? Well, no, because he spends months writing the exact same words - not the actions and frustrations of a blocked writer, but the behaviour of a psycho. And, again, the frustrations don't develop - all the knobs are turned up to max throughout, so there is no sense of impending disaster.

So is it about a family that falls apart at the seams? Well, no, because the family is never really a family to begin with, so there is no frame of reference - the family is dysfunctional from the offing.

Then is it about a child's burgeoning psychic abilities? Well, no, because other than seeing a couple of ghosts, which both his father and his mother can do, and talking in a silly voice, it adds absolutely nothing to the plot, short of giving it a title and using it to provide a body for Jack to axe.

Therefore it must be about a haunted hotel, right? Well, by now, you probably don't even care, but I'm going to keep going anyway, just as the film does, on and on and on. It's about a haunted hotel in the same way that Ghost Ship is about a ghost ship - an excuse for a couple of cheap thrills and low-brow special effects in an attempt to be 'scary'. And, like Ghost Ship, Stanley Kubrick missed the concept that 'horror' relies upon a sense of dread based upon the human fear of what lies out of sight - the darkness at the end of the passageway, the malevolence that watches from the shadows - and not upon a couple of people in period costume who we assume must be dead.

Now I have to add a sprinkling of pretension, because we find that in every Kubrick film: The movie's lack of inherent humanity, its stale motifs and soporific pace leading to a sudden orgy of Dionysian extravagance, fail to believably convey the essence of a human being struggling to maintain a thread of sanity amidst a vision of dystopianism and an overriding sense of ennui. The symbolism of the empty hotel reflecting the yearning loneliness of the soul that is the human condition, far from validating its own position, serves merely to strengthen the apathetic interactions between the viewer and the screen. The movie therefore acts as the antithesis to its own goals, failing to engage the individual while attempting to elucidate a universal notion of the individual's concept of Self in relation to Other. Furthermore, its utilisation of dichotomies - sane/insane, reality/fantasy, natural/supernatural - fail to resonate upon any level beyond the visual.

If you want a scary, haunted house horror, the original version of The Haunting, based on the Shirley Jackson novel that inspired King and others, is the definitive 20th Century haunted-house-as-basis-for-psychological-thriller. If you want a Kubrick film in which his detached style adds to the plot, rather than detracting from it, watch Full Metal Jacket. If you want a film that puts a human face on trying to keep a family together amidst the supernatural, watch Stir Of Echoes. And if you want to watch a film about a guy who goes psycho in a place of geographical isolation, Dead Calm is a must-see.

And now that that's over, to maintain my metaphor of the film, I need to end this review and leave you feeling unsatisfied, confused, and a little annoyed: Frank Sinatra sang about flying to the moon, but he died. The end.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant.
Review: I am an avid Stephen King fan and have read 'The Shining' twice. Despite the fact that Kubrick's interpretation strayed far from the book, it remains one of my favorite King-adapted films and one of my all time favorite horror films.
This movie is a work of absolute genious. It's cold and creepy atmosphere, amazing acting, and technical mastery(my hat goes off to one of the best directors in the biz: RIP, Stanley Kubrick)make it possibly the most unique and thought-provoking horror movie I have ever seen.
Kubrick abandons the conventional techniques of most horror films and depicts the terror in a detached, disturbing fashion, never afraid to show you what's around that dark corner. It is almost completely devoid of jump scenes except for the appearance of two of the title cards. They are punctuated with a jarring orchestral hit that sends you out of your seat, seeming to poke fun at tactics used in mainstream horror to scare the audience. The tension and atmosphere never lets up until the very end. Kubrick delivers scare after scare with frightening precision and brilliance.
Yes, yes, nothing can compare to the horror of the book, but this comes close. It might be entirely different, but I encourage those devout King fans to give this masterpiece a second chance.

Rating:
Summary: SUPER FREAK!!!
Review: THIS MOVIE IS HORRIBLE. IT SUCKS BIG FAT FURRY ASS. JUST LOOK AT THE COVER. THAT EXPLAINS IT ALL!!! HES A SUPER FREAK!!! SUPER FREAK!!!

Rating:
Summary: The pinnacle of Horror.
Review: The Horror genre seems to really lack when it comes to scaring the audience. Out of all the horror films I've viewed, this is the only one that was able to give me an uneasy feeling after watching it. King fans who think his book version was better than Kubrick's take are just lying to themselves. Let's be honest here... when the guy went to remake The Shining as a TV mini-series, it wasn't scary at all. The kid who played Danny wasn't nearly as convincing as the original. Trying to top Nicholson's over the top performance as Torrance is not possible either. It's true that Kubrick really seemed to focus on the derangement of Jack as opposed to all the ghost elements and the silly Hedge animals coming alive in the book. On the TV version that scene was laughable and really would have been useless in what Kubrick's film was trying to do. The scene where the old decrepit woman is slowly walking after Jack as he leaves the room scared the hell out of me as a kid. The atmosphere is just so unsettling, anyone who tells you they weren't creeped out by this are lying. Hail Kubrick!

Rating:
Summary: Kubrick's vision falls waaaaay short once again.
Review: Hard to disagree with Stephen King himself on that point. Highly disappointing if you're a King fan, but if you're another robotic Stanley Kubrick worshipper you will probably love this thing.

There's nothing scary or terrifying here, except Danny's constant spastic shaking and drooling, unless of course you're one of those people that has a habit of looking under your bed at nite to see if the boogeyman has paid you a visit. Boo!

And if I was stranded on a mountain in a haunted hotel, no doubt that Scatman Crother's would be my first choice for a rescue. haw haw Some semi-haunting and nifty visuals as you might expect but the story doesn't gel, and people...you'll want Shelley Duvall to be disposed of in the most gruesome manner possible. What were they thinking casting her in the part of Wendy?

Nicholson was great in his prime, but this movie could have been so much better. King's best work gets the chop on the altar of artistic creativity. Two Axes.

Rating:
Summary: Talk To The Finger!
Review: I agree that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a good movie but parts of the movie come off unintentionally funny and several scenes just may have you rolling on the floor howling with laughter! The bathtub scene for example with Jack trying to get it on with the 30 something looking ghost lady only to have her turn into this ugly old hag is a scene that's unintentionally funny and the scenes with Danny bending his finger up and down and talking in a croaky frog sounding voice are just such examples of unintentional humor besides that it also made Danny seem like such a little freak. It's a good movie though even with unintentional humor.