The Shining

One of the films i was refered to during my tutorial was the classic Kubrick film the shining. As a huge fan of  Stanley Kubricks work of course it was one to look at. Kubrick to me has an amazing use of tension and can create fear from just one look of a character. 

The plot remains true to the original by Stephen King. It follows the retreat of the Torrence family to the Outlook hotel, Where the son Danny starts to recieve terrorfying visions of the past and the future via his gift known as the Shining. It also follows as the father Jack falls into madness and insanity from cabin fever and the haunting of the ghosts of previous staff and residents. As a former caretaker (that which hacked to death his own wife and two daughters) persuades Jack to 'correct' his family like he did, jack falls into a murderous rage and ends up murdering (REDRUM! redrum!) a chef who was called back to the hotel by his sons powers, and attempts to kill his wife and son. 

What i love about this film is that its hard not to be scared or uneased by this film even no its not overly gorey or graphic. There is no monsters, no nightmarish creatures. The ghosts we see look like ordinary people not there to scare and makes the audience wonder if they are ghosts or just a dillusion from jacks mind. He manages to make things overly creepy by the use of close ups of peoples faces, and the great skills of the actors shine through (expesh that of jack nickleson who is very convincing as he is going insane) its the silent pauses, the feeling of ... somethings going to happen next! even the 'nightmare' visions that danny gets arnt really over played for a horror film. the scene where he sees the twin girls who were murdered is brilliently shot and edited, where it flips from them standing there to flashes of them laying murdered on the floor. and even tho the editing is fast-ish paced, its not as subliminal as some of the more modern day horror films. 
The soundtrack to this is both amazing and annoying, the soundscape tends to get into this irritatingly annoying highpitched tone as we see Dannys visions, or something not quite normal is about to happen and it just helps to make the audience feel uneasy. 

Some of the scenes are just beautiful in such a weird way, like the final chase through the maze, the lighting mixed with the snow just creates this stunning quality to it.

The premise is what strikes me more is this idea that a place holds its memorys of all the bad things thats happened in the past. To quote: 

Danny Torrance: Mr. Hallorann, are you scared of this place?
Dick Hallorann: No. Scared - there's nothin' here. It's just that, you know, some places are like people. Some "shine" and some don't. I guess you could say the Overlook Hotel here has somethin' almost like "shining."
Danny Torrance: Is there something bad here?
Dick Hallorann: Well, you know, Doc, when something happens, you can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone burns toast. Well, maybe things that happen leave other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things that people who "shine" can see. Just like they can see things that haven't happened yet. Well, sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago. I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years. And not all of 'em was good.  




This reminds me of what i was saying in a previous post about a place holding a memory associated to it. and i feel i could look more into this! 


Here is one of the documentrys thats attached to the film on bluray that i watched featuring many directors and other roles of the film making industry discussing the work of Kubrick