The Shining "shines" for sure

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2019)

I watched this film with a cousin and a friend during a rather cold summer night. The circumstances might not have been the best, but I have to saw that I really enjoyed this film really much and it is for sure a really effecting and important horror film with one of the best performances ever by Jack Nickolson.

The film starts of and the pacing is patient and slow, but clues tha something big will pop out are visible. We are introduced to a looking-friendly writer,
his caring and quite naive wife and their young child that has an imaginary friend and faces some phycological problems.

They will have to take care of the grand Overlook Hotel for some months, isolated in these huge place. It does nt take a while till madness visits them.

I love the first sequence when they are introduced to each room of the hotel, we can imagine of the horrible things that might take place to those rooms and we are also introduced, just like our characters, to the main location to which the story takes place.

Then the whole film is a gradual turn to madness and hell...

The shot composition is perfect just like every other Kubrick film. The long takes when characters walk in the halls, the scenes with the kid riding the bike, the way the camera pulls back to reveal the mother and son watching tv in a snowy landscape,the room 237 sequence, the labyrinth parts, the classic elevator scene... Kubrick manages to be at his best during at most of these sequences.

The use of the pre-exisitng music is magnificent. Probably my favourite use of music in a horror film.

Everything that has to do with Jack Nickolson in this film.... my lord! His performance is maybe the best perormance in a film ever....? No words really. He completely transforms into this insane character and adds so much to this experience. Also, the lines written for his characters are just perect too. I love it when he gets completely mad and also when the movie leaves hints of what might happe inside the dialogues and lines of the characters.

Now, I might have some things that did not "shine" so much in this film, but that might be because of my expectations or of a misunderstanding. So, the film introduces is us to a lot of "paranoic aspects" and ghosts and really has a gripping history. The matter is tohugh, that it does not take this paranoia to the extreme level of horror or illness that I would want to. It does not explode so much that I felt sick or really really bas at the end. Yes, Jack Nckolson is in every posible way horrifying to watch, but afar from that the film is not much of an "exploding nightmare" at many terms. Sure, it has a consistency in its characters and story... it just...did not ruin me the way I would want it too.

As an experience, I have to say I enjoyed and felt great of how awosome the film looked and how well Jack perfrormed in this film-he is just explosive. My one and only real issue is a wanted to be as hauting as "A clockwork orange" was, without saying that it does work the way it is.

It shines, but without blinding me.
Kubrick is a genius, anyways