DiscoBiscuit
Meat Tornado
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2009
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- 14,794
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- 8w9
Finally rewatched it a few weeks ago, after years and years of not.
(I watched the Room 237 documentary around the same time as well; it might still be on NetFlix.)
My basic observations:
1. It's not nearly as faithful an adaptation in tone to King's book as the later TV series, which actually makes Jack a sympathetic character.
2. That aside, taken as a standalone, it's a really good movie. And everything is so stark, and controlled; anything in that movie is there because Kubrick wanted it to be, down to the pictures on the wall and the arrangement of the cannisters in the walk-in. Even the hotel layout is designed to disorient; there are one-take scenes where Danny is traveling on his Big Wheel and the layout is wrong and doesn't overlap where it should, and there are scenes where they walk out of the same door they entered a minute earlier and the hallway outside is different. Just crazy stuff.
I think The Shining is one of the only properly scary (not jump scare bullshit or needless gore) movies ever made.
Despite the crazy occurrences during the film, it's the plausibility of man's descent into madness that strikes me.