Classic Taste of Horror!

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2020)

Made in 80s, despite being 40 years old; it still gives tough competition to modern day and age horror movies. It was one of the those films that inspired the coming generations till date! And I can exactly see why! The direction is top notch, the camera work is phenomenal! Considering at that time they hadn't got the technological privileges like we do. Some shots, especially the long continuous ones were truly impressive! The sound score is most of the times kept on mute. Many interactions and scenes are being portrayed by their visual brilliance and it was up to the director and cinematographer to exhibit the essence of feel into those particular moments without getting help from sound tracks. Nowadays the formulas have drastically changed. The sound score plays a huge part now, especially in creating jump scares that not oftentimes work! This should be an example to those who calls out jump scares as the ultimate horror making formula. They need to see it in order to understand and believe that a horror film could succeed without keeping any sort of reliance into fake jump scares and loud sudden bursts of sounds!
Enough with the technicalities...
Now let's come to the performances, shall we? Jack Nicholson did a fantastic job. His portraiture of Jack Torrance is out of this world. Can't have enough words to express how great he was. A person who is losing sanity and turning into a menacing entity in a Progressive manner. It's so hard to portray! He was so fitting to it. I serious got terrified of his character and in some scenes he gave that creepy, evil vibes. He was absolutely magnificent! Shelley Duval as Wendy was great too. Many might have some reservations about her. But I think she made the role of her own. With her spectacular subtle presence on the screen made us scared of the On going circumstances. We could easily connect to her and feel empathy as well! Danny Lloyd who played the little kid's character surely had some good showing too. As per the sincerity goes they all performed to their very best.
The storyline Seems simple on the surface but it has some deeper meanings to it. The ending twist has created different obsessive fan bases for sure! It's one of the first takes in Psychological Horror and I really loved the execution. It has that classic cult taste in it. Although I would have love to get a bit more clarity towards certain situations! I won't spoil what were they, but I expected and hoped for better explanations about some incidents that occurred in the plot. I think I might get the answers from the Sequel i.e. "Doctor Sleep". Let's see what we get. My next viewing is in line. Here I come.