“The Shinning” Review

            This past Monday was Halloween and like most individuals instead of going out and partying or trick or treating, I watched horror films all night with a few friends and the one film that truly sent shivers down my spine was Stanley Kubrick’s film “The Shinning”. I’ve seen this film around three times now but each time I always get goosebumps from the score and the overall atmosphere of the majority of the scenes. The film “The Shinning” is based off of a Stephen King novel by the same name, and is focused around the Torrance family Jack, Wendy and their son Danny as they are tasked to watching over the Overlook Hotel all winter until the snow thaws and the staff can return to begin normal operations. At first glance to the viewer this sounded like an easy task, but the hotel actually held a dark secret where a long time ago a man who the same job many years prior had murdered his entire family before killing himself, and to the average person this just appeared to them as a severe case of cabin fever. However, the hotel itself had become an apparition and it tries to force its residents that stay there for a long time to stay forever and become a part of its ghostly collection, and the entity that was chosen to be the representation of the whole hotel was Delbert Grady, the man who killed his family many years prior to prevent them from leaving the hotel. However, it’s not just the story that made this a great horror film, it’s also all the thought that was put into the pre-production, and production phases of the film. This can easily be shown just through the complex layout of the hotel that was developed in production design, for it easily shows that the actual set wasn’t at just one location, but many different locations in order to create the perfect fictional hotel. In addition, it is known that Kubrick often takes numerous takes of the same scene before selection one that best suits the film, and one example of this is when Jack finally succumbs to the hotel and begins to chase Wendy up the central stair case as she tries to wave him off with a baseball bat, and it is said that Kubrick had made the actors due so many numerous takes that it wasn’t until the take where the actress looked extremely fatigued and was about to pass out from exhaustion was the take that he wanted for the film. For Kubrick the positioning of the camera is a necessity, for it being for product placement, or to give you a different perspective, it just gives you more physiological terror as you watch the film. As film critic for the Time Magazine Richard Schickel had stated “Kubrick has made a movie that will have to be reckoned with on the highest level” for it is truly a masterpiece to behold. If you do plan on watching it I would recommend it through a projector on a big screen, and don’t bring any children and follow the Rating System.