The ShiningI have never been much a fan of horror. I grew up a jumpy little kid on the edge about just about everything. Every time I would go to Abilene, Texas, where my grandparents live, I would be scared to death because it seems like I always get shocked every time I went up there and I just had this foreboding sense that it was going to happen this time too.
The Shining was my bold step forward from that, being the first horror movie I had ever seen. I figured that if I was going to make myself watch a horror movie, I may as well go for a critically-acclaimed one.
Here's the deal with horror movies. They basically are split up into two different camps: movies that try and grab you and movies that try and grab you...and hold on. The former group is full of all of these teen scream movies like Sorority Row, Jennifer's Body, the new Halloween movie, or any other movies that rely on cheap scares to make you jump or scream or whatever, but only really get you for a second or two. The latter group is characterized by more psychological movies that don't rely so much on making you jump out of your seat so much as haunt you for a while after the credits roll. The Shining is one of these movies.
The plot of this movie is based loosely off the book by Stephen King of the same title, where a struggling, alcoholic man and his wife and son move in to a secluded hotel for the winter to keep watch and tidy up the place while the hotel is closed. As would happen with any horror movie, it turns out that there was a murder in the hotel in years past and that the hotel is haunted. As a typical result, the family is visited by these evil spirits, especially the boy Danny who has a gift called "the shining," which allows him to communicate with the dead and with other people with "the shining." So yeah, it's kinda weird. Anyway, all sorts of crazy stuff ensues and it won't take you long watching this movie to discover that the wife is one of the dumbest movie characters ever. I won't give anything away, but she seems to make all sorts of mistakes along the way in trying to keep herself and her son alive.
In conclusion, this is a pretty effective horror movie. Sure, it's got that campiness typical of the late 70's-early 80's horror movies, but it still manages to stay with me even today and I have watched it multiple times. I would certainly recommend this to any mature person, whether or not they have ever seen a horror movie.
Next review: No Country for Old Men (2007)
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