The Shining Review

hello world I will shadow the other personality with the drinking problem Stephen King drinking game drinking problem hey if I can use the fact that dr. sleep is giving the shining newfound relevance as an excuse to play the Stephen King drinking game on live and wired at the very least I can also take the time to properly set back observe and review Stanley Kubrick's The Shining while I'm at it without being completely fit chased this time I mean I don't have to play the Stephen King drinking game every single time I watched a movie based on some of his work I just usually do but for the three of you out there out of loop what is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining well it's a 1980 horror movie based on the Stephen King novel of the same name a small family moves into a secluded hotel as caretakers trapped inside for months due to the harsh Colorado weather however not only does the isolation lend its own brand of unease but the dark history of the hotel comes back to haunt the family and slowly but surely insanity reigns Oh within the first five minutes that's what you get for hiring Jack Nicholson as the lead so let's take a look at the shining and see just how crazy things can get we open up to landscapes not much happening but music sure thinks it's creepy [Music] and remember this is 1980 drone footage wasn't really a thing them this is state-of-the-art Steadicam footage taken from a helicopter makes you really appreciate the piloting skills the camera is following the car down to the Overlook Hotel will we see our lead Jack Nicholson playing the role of Jack Torrance applying for the job of Hotel caretaker you see the Overlook closes every winter and I need someone here to make sure it stays in one piece during that time do you mind if I ask why you do that seems to me that the skiing up here will be fantastic yeah but then we wouldn't have a movie or we would recreate snow beast starring Jack Nicholson as the Yeti Stuart Holman played by Barry Nelson explains that the Overlook was built for its scenic view not accessibility the local areas too sparsely populated in the 20 some odd miles of winding road to get there would be ridiculously expensive to keep clear during the heavy snow seasons so they just closed down for the winter that also means whoever holds the job a caretaker must be able to deal with the crippling isolation well I just happens to be exactly what I'm looking for I'm uh I'm outlining a new writing project and and of course Stephen King's story the main character is a writer he's writing a play in the novel in this one he's writing he's writing he's a writer how about your wife and son how do you think don't into it they'll love it it's a general rule of thumb none of my family really likes people socializing there's enough of a nightmare trying to make it through dealing with the people on the other end of a drive-through so they're one big happy introverted family but Ullman isn't done warning Jack of the dangers of isolation you see the Overlook has a dark history one of the previous winter caretakers seemed like a nice guy but while locked away from the rest of the world something inside him must have snapped he ran amok and killed his family with an axe spoiler alert the story of death depravity and dismembering daughters doesn't deter the dude in fact he's sure his wife will find the tale more intriguing than terrifying no plans to tell Danny though played by Danny Lloyd now that he needs telling kissing can't get to her irritated it's gonna phone windy up and a few minutes to tell her that he's got his friend Tony to explain to him all of those relevant plot points now in the book Tony is explained in quite a lot of detail and clearly a friend well as in this movies more mysterious set Danny does actually tell other people about them but who knows how friendly is as Danny wonders why Tony doesn't want to go to the hotel at first Tony doesn't explain why but Danny insists on it so nothing says friendly psychic spear quite like horrifying visions of blood and gore as far as the eye can see with a terrifying blood elevator and creepy little girl emissions blasted into Danny's head this results in a visit by the doctor played by Anne Jackson then he says no there wasn't any weird odor or anything like that just the little voice that lives inside my mouth talking to me you know laughing out of the ordinary unless she explains a situation - Wendy played by Shelley Duvall you see this well who knows what caused it but it probably isn't gonna happen again anyway they're more akin to auto hypnosis a kind of self induced trends you don't worry about a kid just hypnotized himself into a blackout happens all the time well that whole imaginary friend thing is intriguing to the good doctor so Wendy explains that she first noticed it back when they had to take Danny out of school due to an injury an injury caused when Danny was a little messy and his father reacted by nearly tearing the boy's arm out of his socket he was drunk that night something good did come out of it all because he said Wendy I'm never gonna touch another drop of course he did pick up black tar heroin but hey no booze I'm so proud of him yeah no bother the doctor never comes up again the Torrance family is moving in with a little road trip story about the Donner Party because everything is scarier when you involve cannibalism while Jack works on getting up to speed with the higher ups of the hotel dénia soft enjoying themself in the game room yeah little kids just love darts however the spooky spooky girls have arrived who are not twins but are dressed exactly the same and play by twins Lisa and Lois Byrnes they still aren't really all that important yet though so they just leave no bother Olman continues giving Jack and Wendy the five cent or pointing out all the little areas that are going to become very important come the climax this is our famous hedge maze it's quite an attraction around here used to have all kinds of little hedge animals that we're gonna come alive and scare the crap out of you but this is only 1980 and we needed the budget for film lots of film enough film to encase the entirety of Jupiter and just in case of emergency they have a snowcat pretty much a snowmobile made by Hummer there's also the ballroom and bar though it's a bit lacking in one particular area we always remove all the booths from the premises when we shut down that reduces the insurance we normally have to carry yeah I guess locking a family up in a hotel for several months with nothing to do but stare at the snow or get completely [ __ ] hammered might lead to some issues but we also have new important characters to introduce such as dick played by Benjamin Sherman Crothers aka Scatman Crothers dick if you're ready to do it now I think it it'd be good idea if we could show mrs. Torrance the kitchen while I continue on with Jack while Crothers is notable for his vocal talent and playing jazz in the original Transformers series here he's a kook though that just leaves me slightly concerned as to what exactly scatman has in that crock pot no bother it's a big friggin hotel so the kitchen has just about everything you'd need to feed hundreds and hundreds of people every day and while a booze has been moved off-site the walk-in freezer remains along with mountains and mountains of frozen carcasses that's not what caught Wendy's attention though how do you know we call him doc big pardon doc you called any doctor twice just now yeah I mean yeah it's a very common nickname but it's our common nickname you got it dick Wendy thinks this is super weird but forgets about it soon enough he says Danny looks like a doc and that's that however when he's showing her all the canned foods they have in the pantry my screen oh my god he's the killer he's using his psychic powers to kill everyone through poor dietary decisions he's playing the long game now the killer dick was an alternate ending that never panned out instead he uses the promise of ice cream in order to get alone with Danny but not for nefarious purposes you see the sketch chef here has sensed a latent gift in Danny a gift he himself has just as his grandmother before him my grandmother and I can hold conversations entirely without ever only mouth the amazing power of American Sign Language she called it shining oh I get it like Walker's or the infected or the turn you just can't call a zombie a zombie and I guess now you just can't call a psychic a psychic either but the shining is more of a catch-all term for anything supernatural I guess as the topic soon shifts from Danny and his body 'less friend Tony and back to the Overlook Hotel and what makes it so special you know some places are like people sunshine bubbles but as it turns out only people like them with the shining can detect the shining of a shiny shining place that shines Danny however wants to know about a certain room tony has told him about yeah kid it's room two one seven in the book and there's so much nothing in there dick tells him to never go looking no okay then Kubrick well I guess if we're gonna do a hundred takes of someone tying their shoes you really can't be arsed to spend one or two decades to fill a montage watching their day-to-day lives can't be all that interesting Danny tears through the labyrinth Ian's hallways on his tricycle likely marking up the hardwood floor something fierce while Wendy prepares a delicious breakfast for her husband who was still in bed quite late but it's no bother she loves him Danny loves his tricycle and Jack loves the Overlook Hotel and I came up here for my interview it was as though I'd been here before a Stephen King wasn't exactly a big fan of that interview scene he says that Jack seemed like he was crazy long before he even got to the Overlook Hotel though technically speaking he was supposedly drawn to the Overlook Hotel through something in his subconscious which doesn't exactly sound like the picture sanity to me but he'll but now that he's here he can finally work on his writing which he is clearly not doing instead Jack seems to be playing with his balls no bother Wendy and Danny can also enjoy their time at the Overlook running and playing in the insanely large hedge maze yeah can't be too easy to get lost and they have a mini-map at the thing just inside the hotel [Music] and while there are hints at the supernatural and spooky stuff in the first hour of the film it really comes down to the music to drive that home yeah I have no idea how in the hell he's seeing that but it's the dreamlike chimes that fill you with a sense of unease moving on it seems that a massive snowstorm is set to hit the area but that's not the thing to worry our selves over right now danny has found the infamous room two three seven what secrets lie inside the door the room that he was told in no uncertain terms to never ever enter damn locked well I'm coming back as soon as I'm old enough to get a credit card oh well Wendy can take your knowledge of the forecast over to Jack and strike up a conversation about the weather unfortunately he's not feeling much like dealing with idle chatter don't be so grouchy I'm not being grouchy I just finished my work I love this scene personally it reminds me a lot of when me and my fiance butt heads while I'm trying to script whenever you come in here and interrupt me you're breaking my concentration distracting me then well then taking time I mean the beginning it starts that way I is moving on the gist of his argument is that this is his working room she knows this so don't bother me while I'm working say out sheepishly Wendy nods in agreement wouldn't you start right now and get the [ __ ] out of here okay revealing more of Jack's dark side directed at the demure submissive Wendy who Stephen King also really did not like that's not how he wrote it she's supposed to be like this tall blond real go-getter with a take-no-prisoners attitude we just so happen to stick around in a relationship with an abusive drunk because otherwise the story wouldn't happen following this a lot of time passes but not so much in terms of action Wendy and Danny play in the snow wall Jack stairs onward like edibles just kicked them moving on Wendi radios up the u.s. Forest Service who established yes it's snowing and the phone lines could be affected so keep the radio on in the meantime also Denny sees the twins again dead murdered with an axe no bother Tony tells him it's not real anyway so we can move on to Jack being even scarier I wish we could stay here ever Jesus I don't even feel that way about normal definitely not haunted real estate while Jack slowly descends into madness life goes on however as Denny is out playing in the hallway a ball approaches him this mysterious spherical object appears to have originated from the forbidden loom the spooky land of spooky secrets so secret in fact we don't even see what's in it yet instead when he doing actual maintenance work is distracted by the terrified screams of Jack he's having a nightmare a nightmare he readily explains to Wendy seems he dreamed about killing her and Danny cutting them out that kind of psychotic [ __ ] before she can process this though Danny enters the room he's not talking but the tears in his clothes and mocks on his body tell Wendy everything she needs to know [Music] defense process of elimination kind easy put the blame on Jack with his son hurt and his wife accusing him of the deed Jack seeks solitude like a moreso than he's been having so far and heading to the ballroom taking a seat at the bar he makes an observation slow deny didn't it yes it is mr. Torres introducing Lloyd played by Joe Terkel a bartender who brings new meaning to the term distilled spirits now pretty well off the deep-end jack indulges in imaginary alcohol while the moaning his wife never letting him live down the fact that he may be a 1-point kinda sort of almost yanked in his arm clean off however he's in the clear as Wendy rushes in to tell him that there is in fact a crazy woman in the hotel she's off in one of the rooms any went in and she's who hurt him are you guys [ __ ] hanged well let's be real Wendy the crazy husband theory is still winning out over mysterious insane woman who's been living in the hotel who he just haven't noticed in over a month I mean the explanation is supernatural at heart but that just means that dick gets a funny feeling and knows in his heart of hearts but Denny has entered a room two three seven just as Jack does discovering a handy-dandy naked lady unfortunately for him it turns out to actually be a horrifying Lee decomposing naked lady that's a hell how do you do so returning to Wendy he tells her no completely fine nothing at all in the room of course this doesn't explain exactly who her Danny I think he did it to himself those darn kids playing stop hitting yourself doesn't really work as a single-player game once you who allowed his permission of what happened there is no other explanation no there's still a whole daddy beat up up angle I mean maybe Jack's been trying on Wendy's clothes well off screen I don't know Wendy figures things are just getting out of hand and the best thing to do is pack up and get out of here for a while that obviously doesn't sit well with Jack who berate swindie for creating problems ways finally getting some real work done on his writing heading back to the ballroom it looks like Jack's imaginary friends have invited even more imaginary friends over leading him to run to even more Spector's such as grady played by philip stone you chopped your wife and daughter up into little bits and you blew your brains out daughters Jack I didn't get all of those meaty chunks that are just one of them however Grady says that he's not the caretaker Jack is the caretaker Jack has always been the caretaker also the Overlook Hotel is love it his life and Grady's family might have shown some signs of they were unhappy here but all he did was correct that also hey just so you know your kids psychically contacting the cook to come in or screw things up for you just so you know and yes dick is eating the call and heading down there at once not that Wendy is just waiting for rescue she's still not happy here and intends to go tell Jack that she's going to take Danny and leave however when she goes into his work room he is nowhere to be seen allowing her to examine just what he has been writing for the last several weeks [Music] music is telling us this is super terrifying but let's be honest here that would easily be a New York Times bestseller how do you like it nice direction but seriously hire a proofreader I mean all work and no play makes Jack a dull bot don't know if you noticed it by now but yeah Jack's crazy completely off his rocker taunting and berating Wendy as she slowly backs away from him eventually he starts laughing and telling her all about how he's going to bash her brains in not taking into account small detail that she was the one who was armed meanie he is not the [ __ ] out allowing her to drag his ass all the way down to the pantry and lock him up with no way to escape still plenty of food so that's nice of her how her plans to leave with Denny and return with a doctor just cause Jack to break out into fits of laughter telling her she's in for one hell of a surprise okay it's just some elaborate setup for an anniversary gift I mean it's how I would do it look the radio has been sabotaged as well as the snowcat thus Wendy and Danny are trapped there with no way to contact the outside world now that sucks in all but hell Jack still locked up tight having little chats with the disembodied voice of mr. Grady about how sure he messed up once but he can take care of the Overlook just fine just need to murder that family and all this leads to Danny's famous warning repeated over and over again stop it Danny you sound like some youtuber who's trying desperately to stay monetized the mirror lets us know right quick that means murder because daddy's home and he's ready to correct the [ __ ] out of them trying to escape Wendy heads into the bathroom but the window doesn't open very far and she can only manage to squeeze Danny out while having to face off against jackers here's Johnny possibly the most famous line associated with the shining also not in the book ah ad-libs however when he goes for the lock when he cuts his hand causing him to reel away in pain and giving enough time for him to hear a snowcat approaching it turns out this was dick heating of the shining he felt that there was danger lurking here returning to check on Danny [Music] [Applause] by for one reason or another being psychic and able to detect when danger is about to happen it's only really works when the plot says so so dick is dead Danny dashes away from Daddy and through this door we have a dude dressed like a dog dude another dude um okay well after Danny escaped out the window only to run back in the hotel he ran back outside and into the hedge maze with his father trailing behind him slowed by all those injuries he suffered at the hands of Wendy Danny easily slips away and then uses his lead to carefully walk back over his own footprints before slipping away and covering his tracks this means he can escape out of the maze and flee the hotel with Wendy driving dick snowcats jack on the other hand is lost in the maze desperately searching for a family member to kill [Music] to succumb to the elements but technically speaking temperature isn't really an element least not if we're going by the periodic table here anyway the end Wendy and Danny escaped while Jack died at the hotel much like he did before way back in the 1920s this place is haunted by me it's gotta be awkward anyway that was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining yeah it's got its flaws but it's still pretty easy to see why it is considered to be one of the highest rated horror movies of all time as a whole the movie is almost eye candy on the same level of Suspiria with the visual spectacle coming from extremely artistic architecture as much as smart angles in a natural setting also with such a miniscule cast over a two and a half hour running time there's really not a lot of action moving things forward how are the film makes up for that with a deliberately slow burn and of course boatloads of creepy music without the soundtrack The Shining would feel far less creepy and a whole lot more dull as things take quite a while to get going and really don't involve much in terms of things occurring physically it's mostly psychological that being said there are common criticisms levels at this movie mostly from Stephen King that I find a bit confusing yeah jack isn't the most stable looking individual of the beginning but i think it's quite a stretch to suggest he didn't get significantly crazier as the movie progresses mostly though I take issue with how he thinks the character of wendy was misogynistic yes she was originally written to be stronger tougher and far more boring but I don't think that takes away from Shelley's performance if anything I think the idea of Wendy being a more submissive woman makes sense as she's supposed to be staying with a guy like Jack and moving off in the middle of nowhere with him like there's nothing else she'd rather be doing not to mention that Wendy has plenty of agency in the shining she doesn't just sit there and take it when Jack turns she's completely out of her element but she fights back and wins the injuries he suffers from her are the things that hamper him for the rest of the movie if not for Wendy's actions Danny would be dead in the movie will be far more depressing overall the shining is not one of the absolute best horror movies ever made in my opinion but it's still a damn fine movie the direction is sharp enough that for a critic like me even the slow parts are entertaining just a watch and when the hard does come it feels more tense as a result it still has issues here and there but nothing to bring it down any further than for absolutely massive cans of fruit cocktail out of five now if only I actually knew what brand of rum out there came in bread that's been bothering me for years anyway thank you all for watching hi by decra shadow and remember avoid room 237 at all costs seriously you could edit that completely out of the movie and I wouldn't really change that much [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] are you out of your [ __ ] mind

Channel: Decker Shado

Views: 95,874

Keywords: Decker Shado, the shining, movie review, review, review (media genre), stanley kubrick, stephen king, jack nicholson, shelly duvall, horror movie

Id: jw-Zm7mIgrc

Length: 26min 24sec (1584 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019