The Shining [Extended Cut] [4K Ultra-HD] [1980] [Blu-ray

Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ is a horror movie that has gradually grown on me. When I first saw this film at the cinema in the 1980’s I had mixed feelings about it. The portentous opening of the film as overhead camera shots followed a yellow bug car as it twists and turns through the awe inspiring scenery of forest and mountain, delivering the ‘wife and child hating’ Jack Torrance to the troubled Overlook hotel, has always impressed me, what troubled me was Jack Nicholson’s performance as Torrance seemed to go over the top towards the end of the film, I have never been a great fan of the “here’s Johnny” moment and to be honest I still think there are much scarier moments in the film. However having bought (the extended version) and viewed the film again I am becoming more intrigued by Nicholson’s performance, in one scene where Jack collapses to the floor after having had a ‘terrible nightmare of killing and mutilating Wendy and Danny’ his expression is fascinating, a combination of genuine shock and evil, I’ve found it increasingly rewarding to study Nicholson’s facial expressions throughout the movie. Kubrick provides other frightening moments of course, the general grandiose eeriness of the ‘Overlook’ the terrifying apparition of the two murdered sisters (for ever and ever) even the ball rolling out of nowhere scares, but to top it all for me the extraordinary typewriter scene (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy) is both chilling and (for a horror film) unusual. My increased interest in the movie caused me to buy Stephen King’s much vaunted novel; I understand King hates the film, reading through every page of the book my respect for Kubrick’s movie grew, King’s novel is hopelessly longwinded, stretching at most 250 pages of material to nearly twice that length, plus it’s not particularly frightening, Topiary animals bring the book down again and again, yet King seems to love them, hedge lions, hedge dogs, even a hedge bunny-rabbit, for heavens sake, utterly risible. Torrance arrives at the ‘Overlook Hotel’ in King’s work as a loving husband of both wife and child, though possessing a temper and occasionally violent which the ‘Overlook’ exploits, in Kubrick’s version Jack is venomously sick of his family from the start, a venom the ‘Overlook’ exacerbates but is never entirely responsible for, Jack Torrance is well on the way to being the monster he becomes when he arrives. Danny’s special powers ‘the shining’ foresee the horror to come. I think Stanley Kubrick’s vision is far superior.