Horror Movie Review #10: The Shining

THE SHINING
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick
Release Date: May 23, 1980
Running Time: 142 minutes
Language: English
Horror Type: Ghosts
Sex? - Restricted to frontal nudity on a half crazy old woman. With sores.
Gore? - One axe hack and two seconds of dismembered kids in a hall. Plus a recurring scene of blood in heavy torrents.
Momel's Rating: 2/5

"Heeeere's Johnny!"

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) signs up to become the Overlook Hotel's winter caretaker for five months. He takes his wife Wendy and their son Danny in this, at best, chilling story of ghosts, cabin fever and telepathy, brought to life by extraordinary storyteller Stephen King.

The Overlook Hotel conceals a grisly tale of murder, as one previous winter caretaker loses his mind and proceeds to chop his wife & two daughters with an axe. He then puts the barrel of a shotgun to his mouth and promptly blows his brains out. Six year old Danny Torrance is gifted with "the shining;" he's a telepath who is highly sensitive to "traces" of evil history. His father, however, succumbs to the wicked and unearthly persuasions of the hotel's resident ghosts and, equipped with an axe, proceeds to chase after his wife and kid.

It commences with a very poor-spirited chase scene in this hedge maze where manic Jack Torrance dies of hypothermia. Frozen. I mean, what's up with that? Where's Johnny? It IS a scary concept (complete isolation in a hotel with a haunted past with a telepathic kid) backed up by Nicholson's most effective acting, but truth be told, it has the pacing of a Stephen King hardbound.