(Another) Kubrick Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (18 June 2014)

This is definitely my favorite Kubrick movie, despite being also a die-hard Stephen King fan, I love what he did to this adaptation. It really did change the very essence of the characters from the novel and went to completely different grounds. Jack Nicholson gives an (as usual) over-the-top performance as Jack Torrance, and I think one of the great things about it is that he combines utter psychopathic behavior with a dark, sarcastic humor..which i'd attribute to Kubrick's writing. Still, needless to say, it's an amazing masterpiece. The atmosphere of isolation and eeriness it creates is beyond anything i've ever experienced in probably any other horror film. It's not one of those movies that makes you jump in your chair or feel disgusted by all the gore and killing, in fact, it does the opposite of what we'd expect. One example is that scene where Wendy discovers all the "work" Jack that has done in the past few months, the pages filled with endless crazy repetitions of the same sentence. In that scene, we see Jack as he is approaching her, which gives us a heads-up of what's going to come next, even though it still scares the crap out of us when he finally appears before her. That's one of the reasons why it's still frightening and relevant even after 34 years!