Red rum or Murder me now

Rating: 1/10 (5 October 2016)

**CONTAINS SPOILERS** The Shining's beautifully written plot was butchered horridly! The plot was not completely horrible. In reality, it was the execution of the story-line that fell flat on its face. The director Stanley Kubrick was overly concerned on "selling the movie" than "selling the story". This intention was made perfectly clear as the iconic scene of the old woman in the bathtub turned into a make- out scene between Jack Nicholson and a 20-year-old woman. This voluptuous woman morphs into an old hag, chasing Jack out of the room while grossly cackling. If this was intended to be entertaining, it beyond failed. Its only success was in the form of a gross out factor and a huge distraction to the main story-line. In the novel, Danny is the one that entered this room viewing the elderly women in the bathtub and when his presence became known to her, she attacks him. This was never shown in the film, only mentioned by Jack's wife Wendy. The stray from the original story line was not appreciated. Jack Nicholson's acting skills was the only thing saving this film and frankly, the only thing keeping me in the room during the screening of the film. Shelley Duvall massacred the movie. Her acting was the worst I have ever seen. Her blocking and body movements were highly distracting, didn't add to the portrayal of her character and pulled you right out of the story. Her acting career was dismal after the Shining and it becomes quite clear as to why. Every time she opened her mouth, her acting felt like a line read. Her dialogue lacked any shred of believability. Her on screen son put on a better performance than she ever could. That being said, Danny's Tony voice was extremely annoying as well as distracting. It sounded like he was falling victim to the possession of an elderly man than influence by his psychic alter ego. The acting while in the form of Tony was good, but the Red Rum scene was irritating. The line was over used as Danny/ Tony welded Wendy's knife as he wrote red rum on the door in red lipstick. It was repeated over and over, it didn't achieve its goal in adding suspense to the scene or even a creep out factor. All this scene did was make me wish Danny/Tony would stick the knife in a light socket and shut up! Casting Catastrophes aside, other aspects of the Shining have yet to be discussed. The music in the film was off as far as timing is concerned and proved unsuccessful in adding to the mood of the movie. The jump in music acting as a high pitched screech was off. For example, when a dead body was discovered by Wendy, the music jump was way off. You clearly saw the corpse dead center in the screen and it remained there for about 5 seconds, the music jumped occurred on was sounded like a 5 second delay. It pulled my attention away from the world of the shining and left me question why I was continuing to watch. Among the devastating failure there were slight successes. Setting, Costuming, and imagery were all somewhat accurate to the novel's descriptions. Sticking to the techniques displayed in the novel was a clever strategy, something the director should have executed more often during the creation of the Shining, this applies to the filming techniques as well. Pour yourself some red rum, you will certainly need it to sit through even a fraction of this film. Bright side, you might get so hammered you fall asleep and wake up forgetting you ever saw it.