The Shining (1980) review

 
(8/10)

SUPERNATURAL-The seventh of the favorite subjects of Stanley Kubrick, as the booklet foretells.

PLOT:Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is an ex-alcoholic writer who just wants some peace and quiet with his work. When he gets a job offer to look after the Overlook Hotel for it's off-season, he willingly accepts and his family move there and make themselves comfortable. But with the snow keeping them in, will the thoughts of isolation get to them? Not to mention, that the last caretaker had gone insane and murdered his whole family. The son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), finds out he has a power to predict the future and talk with other powered people in his head called "shining" and he uses it to contact his new friend, the black cook (Scatman Crothers) to help. Is there really supernatural happenings in this hotel, or are the family just getting a severe case of cabin fever? It's a great plot executed to almost the absolute best.

ACTING:The acting in here is quite awesome. Nicholson takes his roll as Jack and makes it his. No one could've done it as well as he did. Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance did a great job to. You could really see the fear in her eyes. Lloyd, though being a child actor, did a great job and made his scariest scenes unnerving. Every other actor did a more-than-decent job.

SCORE:The score for this is an unsettiling marvel; it hightens your senses to the point where you just feel disturbed.

CAMERAWORK:Kubrick shines again with his trademark camerawork. He uses the camera in such a way that you can feel the isolation and disturbia.

OTHER CONTENT:This film is where Kubrick starts to fall from his best works. I docked this one rating because I haven't read the book, and most have said it falls from it. I docked it another because though you can feel Kubrick intently in this, you can see that its greatness doesn't match up to some of his past works. But moving on, Kubrick crafts this to where the suspense is like something you can cut with a knife. Every moment is painstaking to the moment you don't know what will happen next. When something does happen, it's like you snap back to reality to such a point where it's disturbing and actually scary.

OVERALL,a great Kubrick film with a great plot, awesome acting, unsettling score, camerawork you can feel, well-crafted suspense, and disturbing scares, but the book is rumored to be fell from and you can tell in the feel that this is where Kubrick's dying out.