The Shining (1980)

 This will be my first review of any movie on my blog here so here it goes.



I have recently watched the classic original film 'The Shining', based on the novel by Stephen King of the same name.

I will start the review with an attempted description of the quality of the film without giving away too much of the plot if you yourself have not seen it, however please be aware that if you read this it may in fact give away or hint at numerous interesting scenes or parts of the movie.


Starting off I myself have read the original book 'The Shining' and was very interested when I finally got to watch the original adaptation of it. The movie follows the plot of the book generally well, or at least as much of it as I can remember, save for a few scenes which is earnestly understandable. I do not expect the cinema industry of 1980  to have the resources to display every last scene of such a lengthy novel, including a larger than life movie hedge lion.  Suspense is also shown incredibly well throughout the film, from something as simple as waiting for a cigarette to burn down before it flakes off, to a chase scene that seems to go on and on, waiting for something important to happen.

I will now start making references to specific scenes in the movie, if you do not wish to have some incredibly great suspenseful parts of this movie ruined, please do not continue reading if you plan on seeing this film.

The movie is chock full of suspense, as previously noted this ranges from something as simple as a cigarette burning, but more interesting scenes relate to the father, Jack's, fall into insanity. A scene where an employee, Dick Halloran, wanders the hotel looking for Jack and Danny and Wendy while Jack himself wanders the hotel with an axe. You wait, and wait, and then wait some more until suddenly.. All at once,  a single quick fluent action breaks the silence as the axe swings and blood spurts. Not all of this is done by a single action though, some scenes of the movie involved where your waiting for something to happen, but your not sure what. An unknown figure walks closer and closer, approaching Jack. And your not sure what is going to happen, what you expect, which only raises the suspense further. One more notable example of suspense relates to the word 'Redrum'. If you do not know the signifigance of this word in the movie do not check it up as it is a truly wonderful scene, the word revealed early on in the movie and will be revealed towards the end.

I highly recommend seeing this movie. An older film to these days standards it still stands out as a wonderful piece of Cinema, the dialogue to the slowly unraveling degradation of a man's psyche, to the individual acting including, at least in my opinion, a brilliant child actor. Each major character plays a different unique individual wonderfully. Wendy is the vulnerable and mostly weak wife who struggles to deal with things as they unfold, afraid to take action and when she does you pity her. Danny is the interesting child with his own psychological problems who is played as perfect as you could want from such a young actor. Jack, the most interesting character to my personal views, is the already problematic father who degrades into insanity. A personal note, is that the facial expressions are simply wonderful in this film, each character adopting a different set according to the personality. I am not sure if this was the type of acting present in the time period but nonetheless I enjoyed it.

For my first review I might be a little generous here, but I give it a 9 out of 10 based on the fact I see very little wrong with it besides a lack of a truly dignified reason for the Overlook Hotel's odd happenings.