The Shining (1980)

The Shining is regarded as a classic which makes the fact that I haven’t seen it before today even more baffling. I saw the documentary ‘Room 237’ which basically that The Shining could be anything including Kubrick announcing that he faked the moon landing. To be honest it took me an awfully long time before I started to get into it. Another thing to note is that there is very little of Stephen King’s novel in this movie apart from the setting and the characters name. The movie sees Jack Nicholson play Jack Torrance who takes on a job as a caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the winter months so that he can write his novel. Things seem to go strange quite quickly though to be honest with Jack Nicholson, its hard to tell when he’s being himself or being the character.

As the movie progresses things get very bleak and one of the things that I do like about this film is that it’s very well shot. From the flying over the lake to the constantly following Danny around on his little bike, there are some good shots which help add to the tension that was in the film. To be honest though Danny Lloyd who played Danny Torrance out acted Shelley Duvall who played Wendy. I have to say that I could have done without Wendy because even though she’s suppose to be in terror at what her husband has turned into I just found myself being slightly bored by her. She didn’t seem to really contribute and was out performed by both Danny Lloyd and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson is on fine form here and pretty much steals the film. Every time he was on screen he was in complete control and every time he wasn’t on screen, I took this as an opportunity to take a mental breather and wait for the next time and that was probably a wise thing to do. The infamous ‘here’s Johnny’ line was exactly as good as I hoped it would be when seen in the context of the film.

As a movie, I thought that it was rather good. It’s very tense and very well acted (apart from Duvall) and also I liked the story but I’m going to read the novel and see a) how different it is to the movie and b) whether its as good as the movie. Only time will tell but I think that as a horror film it does what its does very well and despite the rather reduced cast and characters that are in the vast majority of the movie, it kept my attention from the very beginning and I like this movie.