A personal review

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2017)

As I was born in the late 90', I only discovered The Shining recently thanks to one of my English teacher. Even though, I am not a fan of thrillers, I was really excited to discover this classic that a lot of people were talking about.
This film based on a novel written by Stephen Kings talks about a man called Jack Torrance who is looking for a job. During a job interview, he finds himself a new job as a caretaker of a hotel in Colorado. Despite knowing that the old caretaker killed his family, Jack takes the job. During the entire film we see signs that Jack is losing his mind, like the old caretaker. His craziness is going to lead him to a certain end.
It may be due to my age or the fact that now the thriller genre is way different that it used to be but to me this film was actually a bit disappointing.
I think that the main aspect that I disliked so much was unfortunately the acting. Don't get me wrong, I think that Jack Nicholson was absolutely amazing but the other actor, Shelley Duvall, who plays Jack's wife, Wendy made the acting look horrible. Of course I am in no way a famous actor who can act perfectly but in my opinion she played Wendy in a way that made her look implausible almost ridiculous. She was often giving way too much emotions in insignificant little scenes. Therefore it made her look and sound very annoying.
Let's talk about another different aspect that disappointed me. To me there was also a lack of special effects that weren't included in the film. I think that, like I said before, as I was born in the late 90', I got used to watch thrillers that had a better production budget that lead to better special effects.
When I want to watch a thriller I want to be scared. Of course it's not supposed to be a scary as a horror film but it is supposed to make us feel anxious, to scare us in a psychological way that makes us question certain things. However, those features were definitely missing which is a shame because it could of changed my way of seeing this film.
I do realize that when this film came out, it was a huge success that drawn many people to watch it and who absolutely loved it. But, to me, it didn't grow old very well with the time which lead to a gap with the new thriller genre.
I still think that The Shining is a classic that must be watched but you shouldn't watch it like you would watch a brand new thriller because it will be a very different experience.