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Jack Nicholson,
Jack Nicholson,
Shelley Duvall,
more...
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Stanley Kubrick,
Stanley Kubrick
see all cast/crew...
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: Warner Home Video
: Foreign, Horror, UK
: 144 min.
: English
: English, French
see additional details...
This title is currently out of print.
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"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the opulently ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the Overlook is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family; Jack thinks it's no problem, but Danny's "shining" hints otherwise. Settling into their routine, Danny cruises through the empty corridors on his Big Wheel and plays in the topiary maze with Wendy, while Jack sets up shop in a cavernous lounge with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny's alter ego, "Tony," however, starts warning of "redrum" as Danny is plagued by more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack starts visiting the hotel bar for a few visions of his own. Frightened by her husband's behavior and Danny's visit to the forbidding Room 237, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been doing in his study all day, and what the hotel has done to Jack. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Special Features:
- Behind-the-scenes Documentary The Making of the Shining with commentary by Director Vivian Kubrick
- Theatrical Trailer
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| The icy descent into madness
by sfspaz
February 28, 2005 - 5:28 PM PST
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5 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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Leave it to Stanley Kubrick to create something lush, grand, and epic out of the sparsest of materials: barely more than 3 actors, an empty lodge, a typewriter, and, well, an elevator full of blood.
Rarely do ingredients come together as successfully as they do in this film. Kubrick's love of filmic still life, Jack Nicholson's barely-there grasp on the world of the sane, Colorado's bleak winter landscape, and King's spacious tale of a slow descent into insanity seem perfectly married in this film. As this film is definitely for fans of the "slow-burn" method of storytelling (one of Kubrick's calling cards), some might find its snails-pace a bit challenging, but therein lies the palpable tension of the film -- the slow but inevitable descent into madness that grips a family living stranded in an empty mountain lodge for months on end.
Nicholson is in top form as the frustrated writer with growing thoughts of familiar murder. Shelly Duvall is impressive as the terrified wife, and even young Danny Lloyd is effective as the doe-eyed boy with hallucinations of murderous twins. More a movie about holding your breath than jumping out of your seat, Kubrick shows his usual brilliant restraint in pacing, and employs drawn-out, slow motion shots and cinematic tools to convey the growing menace that permeates the lodge. Several sequences have become movie legend. While Nicholson's axe-wielding entrance into the locked bathroom garnered the most post-film recognition, few who have seen the film will ever forget Danny's hypnotic Big Wheel rides through the empty hallways, the groundskeepers harrowing demise, and of course the aforementioned elevator with its horrifying cargo.
It's a tribute to Kubrick's film-making and the efforts of the cast that a movie with such a contemplative and theoretical take on horror can leave the viewer so exhausted by the film's end. The opposite of a "slow-burn", this movie exemplifies a "slow freeze" which leaves the viewer (and the movie's nemesis) paralyzed by movie's end.
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| I've seen better
by Trevin
January 17, 2005 - 12:35 AM PST
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1 out of 11 members found this review helpful
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| I have seen two versions of this film: this one with Jack Nicholson, and a later one (1997) with Steven Weber. As far as casting goes, I much prefer the latter. Jack has always seemed much too creepy to me to be able to pose as a writer who starts out as a good guy. Steven is much more believable from beginning to end, showing the gradual change in the character's state of mind. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 7.61)
2433 Votes
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