Horror Movie Review! The Shining (1980)

Hometown Ghost Stories

The hosts of HTGS Reviews conduct an in-depth analysis of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece, The Shining. They explore the significa

Key takeaways

• The hosts debate whether Kubrick's adaptation is superior to Stephen King's book, with some favoring the film's execution.
• Rob highlights Kubrick's mastery of slow dissolve transitions that work effectively despite appearing unconventional.

Main topics

• Comparison of The Shining film vs. book
• Stanley Kubrick's directing techniques

Notable quotes

It is such a good movie that it's hard for me to say that it's not better than the book.

Conclusion

A deep dive into horror cinema history that provides technical appreci

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm John Grylls from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Speaker 3 (0:35) Welcome in everybody to HTGS Reviews. I am your host Rob Coakley, joined as always by Dave Wilkins. Hello Speaker 1 (0:43) Rob Coakley. Speaker 3 (0:43) And Jesse Wilkins. What's Speaker 1 (0:46) up? Speaker 3 (0:46) And today we are reviewing a horror classic. Do we all think it's a classic? Do some of us think it's not good? We're gonna see. But we felt we needed to review The Shining because we covered the Stanley Hotel. on last week's main episode so it's only fitting that we review the movie the shining maybe we'll do the mini series that came out and actually was filmed at the stanley at some other point but we are talking about stanley kubrick's 1980 movie starring jack niple and dave why don't you just jump skip hop run and do the synopsis for this movie please good Speaker 1 (1:31) idea The Shining, 1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Jack Torrance becomes a winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny, who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's vision becomes more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets. and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family. This is a classic. That's kind of why we're covering it, because we want to hit on some of the classics this spooky season. And this is one of those movies that I go back to and watch pretty much every spooky season. I got like 10 that I really like that I often go back to. And this one was really well done. Most people know it was an adaptation of a Stephen King book. And everyone always says things like the book's so much better. And they're usually right. But there are very few cases where I think the movie actually is better than the book. This is one of those cases, in my opinion. Speaker 3 (2:37) Stephen King's going to fight you. Like, just fist fight you for that thought. Speaker 1 (2:42) That's fine. I also think that Stanley Kubrick is a more talented artist. I am a Stephen King fan, though. Speaker 3 (2:48) Kubrick is... So, Kubrick's weird for me in general. Because... I don't know if I want to get into this immediately, but here we are. Kubrick does things that I feel like if anyone else did them would be considered hacky. But because of the way he does it, it just always freaking works for his movies. What's an example Speaker 1 (3:13) of what you mean? Speaker 3 (3:14) Some of his just transitions. I'm like, man, if anyone else tried to do some of these transitions that he's doing, they just wouldn't work like his very slow dissolve transitions that he's doing in this movie. You know, like there's it's almost I don't know, like daytime TV esque. But for some reason it works. Why did this shouldn't work? This shouldn't work right here. And it's actually working. And it's like some of the flashes that he was doing to it felt like he was holding them too long. And it's like, but he's not because it's actually more effective the way he's doing it. So like everything you would think about filmmaking. with him and the stuff that he does like i said 99 of other people would do it and do it wrong even though they were doing close to the way he does it his timing is just almost impeccable on the way that he does every single thing he does in a movie and it's like i that's when i was watching it this time like because i've seen this movie obviously quite a few times i was watching more of the filmmaking of this one and i was like man like I don't know. I just think if you told me what was going on in this movie from a filmmaking perspective, I'd be like, that movie sounds like it sucks. And it doesn't. Speaker 1 (4:30) Yeah, that's fair. I like Stanley Kubrick. I've always been a fan of his. He did this one that's great. Full Metal Jacket was great. Clockwork Orange was great. His movies Speaker 3 (4:43) do slap. They do Speaker 1 (4:45) slap. Speaker 3 (4:46) Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:49) Jesse, what are your thoughts? Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:52) just an absolute classic. I was horrified of this movie growing up, and it still holds up. It still holds up. I was happy about that. So I rewatched it yesterday, and I was like, yeah, it's still great. Still fantastic. It is such a good movie that it's hard for me to say that it's not better than the book, but I thought the book was fantastic. So it's both absolute Speaker 1 (5:15) bangers. I'm not dogging on the book. I do like the book. I do like the movie adaptation better. And the reason that I'm drawing a distinction between the two is because Stephen King hated the movie because Stanley Kubrick changed so much about it. And nobody's going to tell Stanley Kubrick how to make a movie, even if you wrote the book. And there's sort of that feud back and forth between King and Kubrick. And I think I'm with Kubrick. I liked his adaptation of it. Speaker 2 (5:43) No, it was solid. It definitely had its differences. By the way, we're going to spoil this movie. We'll also spoil the book as well. I thought that the ending of the book... was a little more climactic. I thought, you know, the hotel blowing up was pretty cool and kind of the need to keep going back and feeding the furnace and things like that. They touched on it lightly in the movie, but that was like a main part of the book was this furnace. And there was like a whole bunch of like psychological things that were tied to it. And then, um, But I guess with the, what was this, 1980 movie? This might have been one of those things that didn't hold up, would have been maybe the special effects on blowing up the hotel. So maybe that was one reason that they didn't do it, or it was just kind of him having some sort of creative element to changing up a little bit about the movie that wasn't in the book, or vice versa. Speaker 1 (6:37) Or maybe the owner of the hotel was like, please don't blow up my hotel. The Stanley Hotel was like, it's fine. Go ahead and do it. It's not a hotel. Speaker 3 (6:47) Yeah, they were like, we're still not going to do it. I think, well, I mean, like Stephen King has to realize that, you know, his books are really long. To adapt them faithfully to a movie is never going to probably happen. Like shot for shot based on the book with how long he's writing these things. He's going, you know, you have you ever. downloaded an audio book of Stephen King they're like 40 hours long like these things do not stop they continue to go and when you start to like translate that to a movie script it's like dude you're never this movie's two and a half hours long like which is one of my only like would generally be one of my negatives for a movie of for a horror movie um Do I think they could trim this particular movie a little bit? Sure. I don't think it's egregious to this film. But the point being, if you want to do a Stephen King thing right, it's a miniseries. And a lot of his miniseries have been shit Speaker 2 (7:50) anyways. Yeah, some of them kind of fall apart. This one, I felt like I could have used another 30 minutes, actually. Speaker 1 (7:57) Because what you're doing in this movie is you're going through the steps of him basically losing Speaker 2 (8:02) his mind due to the... conditions the isolation um you know whatever demons he's fighting with his past you know drinking problems and things like that i felt like it it almost moved too quick where he went from you know perfectly sane to being homicidal and i yeah i think you could have could have dragged that out a little longer actually i Speaker 1 (8:24) actually don't don't disagree with that it did kind of feel like a uh sort of like a light switch went off and suddenly he was just crazy So yeah, I could maybe not adding another 30 minutes to the runtime, but maybe a better use of the time that you had because two and a half hours is very long. Speaker 3 (8:40) When I was watching it this time, I thought I saw where the light switch completely flipped on this. And I don't know if you guys have the same idea or saw something different, but it's the bar. I mean, it makes sense. It's the bar scene. The bar Speaker 2 (8:56) into the bathroom scene. Speaker 3 (8:58) Oh, see, I disagree. I think it's the original bar scene with just him and the bartender. And when he has the first drink, his face changes. And I think this is why Jack Nicholson's great. If you watch him take that first drink of bourbon and put the glass down, his face, I don't even know how to describe it, but his face and his eyes are different than before he took that drink. And from that point on, he was like done in the movie. Like he was a completely different. person. Now, obviously, it escalated a little more throughout the movie, but to me, that was the tipping point. Again, you got there a little too quick, to your point, but that was the tipping point to me. And I was like, oh, I don't think I've ever caught that watching this before, and I definitely caught it this time. Right. I Speaker 1 (9:51) think Speaker 3 (9:51) that's a good catch, Speaker 2 (9:52) because I actually haven't caught that. Speaker 1 (9:54) But I think the one distinction between the movie and the book was the book was more like, you know, Like Jesse mentioned, going over to the furnace over and over and over again, and he's slowly losing his mind. Whereas the movie, I think, wanted to make it more like the ghosts over the building wanted him to lose his mind, which was part of the book, too. But I think the movie highlighted it more, where you have the scene that you're talking about where the bartender gave him the drink. And then there's the scene with the old caretaker in the bathroom, where that old caretaker is clearly trying to, obviously, very explicitly. get Jack to murder his family. So I do feel like that's one distinction between the books and the movies. Movie. Speaker 3 (10:37) Is there anything else? Because as someone who didn't read the book, do you see any of the either of you because you both have read it? Do you think Stephen King has any proper gripes