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Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is a writer in terrible need of
inspiration, and he thinks spending the winter in a remote hotel closed
for the season as caretaker will provide him with just that, plus enough
calmness and tranquility to concentrate on his writing. So it's off to the
place together with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny
Lloyd) - but at first the place does absolutely nothing to him, and he
gets more and more frustrated by his lack of inspiration. After some
time, Danny, who has some ESP talents, starts seeing things - gruesome
things, because you know, a former caretaker (Philip Stone) has brutally
slaughtered his family in the hotel. Eventually, Danny even shows
stranglemark after he has been in the room where the murder happened, and
when Jack investigates, he runs across a rapidly decaying woman in the
room - but later lies to Wendy he has found nothing at all. The hotel
gets to Jack after a while, and even though the place is totally deserted
and snowed in, he starts seeing people, like a soft-spoken bartender (Joe
Turkel), a July 4th party from years past, and even the former homicidal
caretaker (who has since long killed himself) who tells him to "take
care of his family". Also, he has been starting to write like a
maniac lately. Eventually, Wendy checks what Jack has been writing all
this time, and she only finds pages after pages of "All work and no
play makes Jack a dull boy". Jack on the other hand has since picked
up an ax and goes after his wife and son, and even though they put up all
the resistance they can, they seem to be fighting a losing battle - plus,
Jack has his ghostfriends (like the former caretaker) to help him. Sure,
Danny has called someone (Scatman Crothers) to the hotel via an ESP trick
dubbed "the shining", but this someone is slain almost instantly
slain by Jack. Ultimately though, Danny manages to lure Jack into the maze
in front of the hotel and makes sure that he loses his way - upon which he
freezes to death while Wendy and Danny make a getaway in above someone's
snowmobile. In many ways, The Shining is a great movie,
from its almost unparalleled and highly effective steadicam work, to its
great and atmospheric sets used to the best effects, to Jack Nicholson's
glorious unhinged performance (sometimes he overdoes it though), to many
iconic oneliners and setpieces, to a directorial effort worthy of Stanley
Kubrick, to ... oh so many other things. I would go so far as to say The
Shining is a masterpiece of modern horror. And yet, The Shining
is not exactly a perfect film, and the main flaws are all in the writing:
Basically, the story opens too many fronts all at once, and while many
sequences are effective as sequences, they don't necessarily make
narrative sense. Plus, the whole title doesn't make much sense: So ok,
it's properly explained what the "shining" is, and the little
boy uses it to call Scatman Crothers to the hotel - but other than
providing Wendy and Danny with transport, Crothers' loveable holy black
man character has no narrative function. Actually, there is not any reason
at all for Danny to have ESP abilities to begin with. Plus, the 1921-angle
is never explored - and now I do understand that in horror films not
everything needs to be explained away, but since the last scene pretty
much hammers the fact home that Jack was here in 1921 (a photo proves
this), you'd expect an explanation, right? Basically, what I'm meaning
to say is that the movie, as great as it is otherwise, could have been a
lot tighter if some of the narrative dead weight (roughly half an hour)
was dropped and the rest put into better shape. Basically, the reason for
the narrative letdowns is that Stanley Kubrick might have been many
things, but he never was a horror man per se, and Stephen King - well, he
writes effective novels at times, but they all seem a bit random - to put
it another way, he might sell well, but he certainly is no Shirley
Jackson. This all said, The Shining is still a must-see film, a
masterpiece maybe, and one of the most iconic horror films for sure, but
not without its flaws.
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