The Shining

The first time I saw The Shining, I was a little let down.  Sure, I liked it okay, but the film had such a reputation that I was expecting to be blown away.  How often do we see legendary directors entering the horror genre and succeeding?  And how many other horror movies have become so ingrained in popular culture as this one?  Obviously, The Shining is a classic.  And yet...something just didn't click for me.  This year, I thought I would give it another go and see what influence age, wisdom, and forgetfulness would have on my opinion.

This is an endearing tale of a man and his love of bourbon, right?

Jack (Jack Nicholson) is an aspiring writer looking for a change, so he takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.  The hotel's staff leaves for about five months out of the year because the area receives so much snow that the hotel is effectively isolated from humanity.  Of course, they might take time off because the hotel is built on an Indian burial ground, has ghosts, and a previous winter caretaker had gone insane and murdered his family in the hotel; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.  Did the killer caretaker go crazy from cabin fever?  Nobody knows.  But why shouldn't Jack bring his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with for five months of quality family time? 

No reason

Before the hotel staff leaves, though, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) pulls little Danny aside and lets him in on a secret --- he knows that Danny secretly has some sort of psychic ability.  Dick calls it "the shining," and he has it too; unfortunately, places sometimes "shine" when really bad things happen there; think of it as a psychic ring-around-the-collar.  The Overlook Hotel has a nasty "shine" to it. At first, things seem fine.  Danny and Wendy find all sorts of things to do in the enormous hotel.  Jack, though, seems to be suffering from writer's block and is getting more and more irritable.  And creepy.  And he starts hallucinating.  Is it just a case of cabin fever, or is it something worse?

It's worse --- as caretaker, Jack has to clean this up

Oh, man, I needed a movie like this.  The horror movies I've been reviewing this month (with the exception of Thirst) have been fairly cut and dry with their direction; either the directors were competent or they were not.  Stanley Kubrick is, of course, more than just competent --- the man was an artist.  Enjoying his technical prowess with the camera, his use of color and sound, not to mention the great performance by Jack Nicholson, was a treat after so many bad slasher pics.  Right from the opening scene, we get a gorgeous series of helicopter shots, showing Jack's car absolutely dwarfed and completely surrounded by untamed nature; not only is that pretty to look at and unlike almost anything else you will see in a horror movie, but it's symbolic.  Hell, yeah!  That's what I've been missing from my cinematic diet recently! 

Art + axe-wielding maniac = can't miss movie

As impressive as the visuals are --- and there are a ton of iconic shots in this movie, so "impressive" is probably underselling it --- what struck me in this viewing was Kubrick's use of sound.  I loved the discordant static when there was any shining going on; it was usually subtle, but called attention to itself every so often, like when Dick and Danny first meet.  Similarly subtle is the unreasonably unsettling noise of Danny's big wheel as he tears across the hotel's wooden floors.  There is no reason to suspect something is wrong, but the uncharacteristically loud and abrasive noise sets you up for the creepiness that lies just around the corner.

Kubrick's direction is fantastic, but it would have been just an empty technical exercise without the effort of Jack Nicholson.  Nicholson, once again, takes a pretty standard role (an alcoholic writer going crazy) and makes him charming and frightening at the same time.

...and this is his "charming" face

In other words, Nicholson takes a role that could have been shallow or overacted in another actor's hands and instead fleshes it out into a believable character.  I noticed something new this year, though; Jack's condescension toward his wife always struck me as odd, but it made more sense to me this time --- his character here almost feels like a logical extension of his role in Five Easy Pieces, only this character got married to the pleasant but dumb chick.  Speaking of whom, I was not impressed by Shelley Duvall.  As good as Jack Nicholson was, Duvall was commensurately bad.  It felt like she was an extra that was asked to read lines with the cast during a break, not the lead actress in a motion picture.

I hate mouth breathers

She and Kubrick infamously clashed throughout production, but I am astounded that Kubrick settled for the performance we see on screen.  Maybe they just wanted Wendy to be a spineless dishrag of a character.  Little Danny Lloyd wasn't much of an actor (although no relation to Jake Lloyd), but he did a good job of being completely impassive whenever adults were speaking to him.  Other than an impressive blank stare and a creepily-voiced finger...

Lesson: kids are stupid

...I suppose Danny was adequate.   This was years before audiences actually expected anything out of their child actors, so I guess that being okay was good enough, even in a movie like this.  Personally, I would have liked to see him act frightened more often, because that was when he was at his best.

Trauma = Acting

As much as I enjoyed The Shining this time --- it went from "pretty good" in my mind to "effing great" --- it is occasionally uneven.  First and foremost, this is a long horror movie.  I understand that it takes time to set the mood just right, but damn it's long for what it is.  Perhaps more irritating for many people is how the movie doesn't tie up its loose ends. 

• What was with Grady having two first names?  
• Was Jack a reincarnation of a former Overlook employee, or was he absorbed by the evil hotel?  
• Is this a story of a haunting, or simply a man going insane?  
• Why did Jack seem to lose the ability to communicate as the film progressed?

I'm not going to try to answer those questions, even though I believe they are all important.  I like the ambiguity in this story because it allows viewers to come up with their own interpretation of what has occurred.  I don't always like it when filmmakers force the audience to decode their stories (David Lynch, I'm looking at you), but I think The Shining conveys enough of the story to allow viewers to enjoy it with a single viewing; subsequent viewings, though, make the inconsistencies more noticeable, which made me want to discuss and enjoy the movie further.

Sometimes, all you need is a friend to set things straight for you

I'm so glad I took the time to re-watch The Shining this month.  It's not necessarily one of those movies that you immediately acknowledge as a classic (as evidenced by its lukewarm initial reception), but there are a lot of layers here and it is fun to see how Kubrick tries to frighten audiences.  The movie is too long and the non-Nicholson cast is mediocre if you're being generous, but the film makes up for its deficiencies in other ways.  This is a horror movie with almost no violence, and yet it is one of the most creepy, claustrophobic films you will ever see.

I have a few side notes to add.  Is it strange that I laughed out loud when this image flashed on the screen?

 It's probably not supposed to be funny, but I giggle every time I see it.  I think it's Jack's gaze, combined with his eyebrows.  Whatever.

I have actually visited the place that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining, the Stanley Hotel in Colorado.  It's not as creepy as the Overlook (the movie was filmed elsewhere), but it is kind of cool to see how closely the film conveys some of the rooms in the building.  Oh, and the Stanley has a TV channel that plays The Shining on a continuous loop, which is pretty cool.

And I can't review The Shining without making a single reference to The Simpsons.  For my money, this is their best "Treehouse of Horror" episode ever.

Carrie

I knew it!  And now, thanks to Carrie, I can prove it!  What is "it," you ask?  "It" is the fact that girls love being naked in the women's locker room.  The title sequence for this movie is one long slow motion sequence, filled with laughing, bouncing, and a complete lack of concern over full frontal nudity or wetness from the showers.  If I had seen this scene when I was in high school, it would have BLOWN MY MIND.  As it is, I'm a married adult now, so I just thought it was an...interesting way to begin a horror movie.

Not surprisingly, Carrie is about Carrie (Sissy Spacek), a high school student that is bullied at school by the other girls and bullied at home by her crazy religious mother (Piper Laurie).  Basically, Carrie sucks at life.  Things get worse when, in the gym shower, she gets her first period and freaks the hell out.  Her classmates helpfully heckle her and bombard her with tampons.  Did you know that girls mature faster than boys?  Apparently, Carrie had never heard of a period before that day.  I don't blame her for being frightened; if I noticed blood seeping from my naughty bits, I wouldn't be calm either.  Her classmates behavior gets them in trouble with the gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), who forces the girls to serve detention with her or lose their prom privileges.  Most of the girls --- particularly Sue (Amy Irving), Norma (PJ Soles), and Helen (Edie McClurg, who never played a young woman again) --- were willing to take detention, but the head Mean Girl, Chris (Nancy Allen) refused on general principle.  And she vowed revenge on Carrie for not really being the cause of her not being allowed into prom.  Sue, on the other hand, felt really bad about the whole ordeal and convinced her boyfriend, Tommy, to take Carrie to prom.  Meanwhile, the evil Chris hatches a plan with her dim-witted boyfriend (John Travolta) to publicly humiliate Carrie and finally punish her for existing.  Little do they know that Carrie has special powers, powers that get stronger when she's upset.  MWA-HA-HA!

Carrie is the first film to be adapted from a Stephen King novel.  Personally, I'm not a huge King fan; I've tried, but I just can't get past the recurring theme of drunken writers, the unexplained supernatural phenomena, or his habit of being self-referential.  Normally, I find the movie adaptations of his work to be pretty horrid (Dreamcatcher...***shudder***).  Of course, with over 120 writing credits on IMDB, the man is bound to have some good stuff on occasion, and I think Carrie qualifies as one the better King films.

 The acting and direction in the film are pretty solid.  In the lead role, Sissy Spacek is annoying, frightening and sympathetic at the same time.  I think the best part of her performance was when things went wrong at prom; I normally don't find bug eyed, stiff limbed performances compelling, but she reminded me of a velociraptor.  That's probably not the most flattering thing to say about a performance I liked, but there was definitely something cold and reptilian in the climactic prom scene.  Piper Laurie also turned in a good (albeit one-dimensional) performance.  I'm pretty sure that she has a lock on the Crazy Mother in Film award for the 70s.  Spacek and Laurie were so convincing in their respective roles that they were nominated for the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Academy Awards, respectively.  Horror movies occasionally get a little respect at the Oscars, but this was the first horror film to earn two acting nominations.

The rest of the cast, however, was pretty mediocre.  PJ Soles was...well, if you've seen her once, you get the idea; there's nothing wrong with that, but nothing noteworthy, either.  This was the first time I had ever seen Nancy Allen outside of a Robocop movie.  Apparently, she was pretty at some point, but not pretty enough to get away with the crap her character pulls in this movie.  As for young John Travolta, I have to say that I'm shocked he had a film career after this.  Aside from having the earliest utterance of "git er done" I have heard in film, Travolta turns in a performance that makes his Barbarino look like a genius.  Brian De Palma directed the film and I guess he did a pretty decent job.  After all, his two main actresses earned Oscar nominations, so he couldn't have done a bad job, right?  I can see De Palma's style at work, with his use of slow-motion in key scenes, but overall I wasn't too impressed.  I think my biggest problem with De Palma's direction here is his frequent homages to Psycho.  Carrie's high school is Bates High and every time Carrie uses her powers, the slasher music from Psycho is played.  Naming the high school after Norman Bates is fairly subtle and clever, but the musical cues just felt lazy; using such recognizable horror movie music to indicate that Carrie's powers might be dangerous is overkill and those scenes would have been better served with an original composition.

The strength of this movie is its ability to catch you off guard.  For most of the film, you want to root for Carrie and you're glad to see her coming out of her shell for a bit.  I also agreed with Miss Collins, who sympathized with Carrie, but also felt the urge to smack her.  And she did.  The first two-thirds of the film is pretty low key and you just know that something bad will happen at prom.  When it does, though, this movie definitely under-promised and over-delivered.  The scale of Carrie's rage is pretty shocking the first time you see it.  And if that doesn't affect you, Spacek's nonverbal acting should; as I said before, she seems inhuman in these scenes.  As effective as the ending is, though, the rest of the film has a lot of generic and predictable moments that diminish the payoff of those final scenes.  Still, this is a classic for good reason.

Maximum Overdrive

While orbiting around the Sun, minding its own business, the Earth passes through the tail of a comet.  I think we all know what happens next: inanimate objects come to life with homicidal tendencies.  Yes, lawnmowers, electric knives, power cords, and especially vehicles all take on a life of their own and begin to kill humans.  Like many great movies, this one takes a global disaster and personalizes it.  The film focuses on a group of people trapped by circling semi trucks at a North Carolina truck stop.  Can they escape without becoming road kill?

That is the basic story of Maximum Overdrive, directed by author Stephen King and based on his short story, Trucks.  If you think this movie sounds bad, trust that instinct.  It's pretty terrible.  In fact, this is the only directorial effort from Stephen King; he claims to have been coked out of his mind while making it, which might explain a few things.  While certainly not an Oscar contender, this is a surprising change of pace from most adaptations of King's work.  For one, it sounds stupid.  And it is.  Want proof?  AC/DC made the soundtrack.  But most of King's story premises are pretty dumb, when you think about them; he just plays up the suspense and seriousness to make them seem less ridiculous (Christine, Cujo, and The Running Man are all good examples of this).  This movie, though, is aware of how stupid it is and plays up its humor and campiness.  Is that a good choice?  Maybe not, but it could have been much worse.

Undoubtedly, this movie's biggest strength is Emilio Estevez as the hero, Bill.  Bill is an ex-convict (or ex-juvie kid or something...it's really not important) that works as a cook for Bubba (Pat Hingle).  Estevez doesn't have much to work with, but he manages to not sound like a complete idiot when he someone says things like "Jesus is coming, and he's pissed!"  Despite quality lines like that, Estevez is clearly the most charismatic actor in the movie, which serves as a reminder that he was actually half-decent in the 80s.

The movie's story isn't very good (obviously), but it has a lot of kinda goofy stuff in it.  The first line of the movie is delivered by Stephen King himself: "Honeybun, this [ATM] machine just called me an asshole!"  Not terribly clever, but it sets the tone for the movie pretty well.  Bubba is a shady guy, forcing his staff of ex-cons to work unpaid hours by threatening to report violations to their parole officers.  Not surprisingly (well, not in this movie, anyway), Bubba illegally sells guns.  Not just any guns, but uzis, grenades, rocket launchers and the like.  As you might imagine, that turns out to be pretty convenient when fighting semis.  Also interesting is the newly married couple (including Yeardley Smith of The Simpsons, whose voice is grating at best here), who manage to have the only car in the world that is not trying to kill its owners.  Instead, they drive to the truck stop for safety; being surrounded by trucks is apparently better than just pulling over on the highway and hiding in the woods.  The best part of this movie is the clincher at the end.  SPOILER: It turns out that all this was caused by aliens, as the first stage in a massive invasion.  AND EMILIO ESTEVEZ FIGURED THAT OUT ON HIS OWN.  Of course!  Why didn't I think of that?  Luckily, the end credits tell us that Soviet lasers take care of the threat for us.  So, I guess this is an 80s movie that makes the USSR heroes.  How about that?

Is this movie good?  Not even close.  It does, however, embrace its own stupidity with enthusiasm.  Even common sense stuff, like "don't give the killer semis gasoline when they run out" is ignored and justified.  You need stupidity of the boldest kind to even think of that, but bold stupidity is what this movie has in spades.  It's not quite fun enough to be awesomely bad (and therefore, fun to watch), but it's close.  I don't blame those that enjoy this movie.  I just think they need to get out more.

The Mist

Do you love stereotypes?  If so, then I have a movie for you!  It's called The Mist!  It's about a mysterious mist that envelops a town.  I probably should have written "Spoiler Alert" before that sentence.  Oh well, it's too late now.  Yes, this is another movie where a small group of friends/naughty teens/townspeople gather together in a building, trying to stay safe while zombies/vampires/serial killers/monsters/weather reign supreme outside.

I'm not against this story formula, mind you.  Most zombie movie follow it, and 30 Days of Night was the best vampire movie I've ever seen.  The enemy this time is, predictably enough, in...the mist.  DUH DAH DUMMMMM!!!  The building that townspeople gather in happens to be a grocery store.  So we've got a novel location and mysterious natural-looking phenomenon.  With those two elements, you could make a taut, stylish horror/thriller with no problem.  You could even go the original Dawn of the Dead route and use the location as a commentary on consumerism.  Or you could do what writer/director Frank Darabont did and do nothing of the sort.

Instead, we get insufferable, unbelievable characters.  I know, the script is based off a Stephen King short story, but that's no excuse.  Thomas Jane is the main character, and he is the best part of this movie; Jane stands out in his role as "the rational guy," if only because everyone else is poorly developed and makes bizarre choices.  Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden is god awful as the resident holier-than-thou Bible thumper.  Does this movie really need a uber-judgmental Puritan in the cast?  Wouldn't it have been better served with a more moderate character, like...I don't know...maybe a reasonable person with a strong religious faith?  I would have settled for a character that just didn't sound like a cartoon.  Instead, one of the main characters is completely unsympathetic, despite a (theoretically) sympathetic underlying motivation.  Andre Braugher, who can be excellent when given the right role, is another disappointment.  He plays a hot shot lawyer and is clearly the most intelligent person in the grocery store.  His character's skepticism and sense of persecution are on par with the most annoying JFK conspiracy theorists you can imagine ("The moon landing was just a cover-up for The Man to finally get rid of FrankenKennedy!"  Actually, that's a decent B-movie right there...).  William Sadler is rarely a good actor, but is normally inoffensive.  Here, he's annoying.  Laurie Holden is decent, but she doesn't have a whole lot to work with.  The only supporting actor that was a pleasant surprise was Toby Jones.  He wasn't great by any means, but it doesn't take much to be a breath of fresh air when the rest of the cast are stock characters from soap operas.  Here, he plays the short, wussy guy who happens to be a crack shot with a pistol.  That's actually kind of cool.  The rest of the supporting cast is poorly developed, but ranges all the way from redneck to hick.

The characters are bad, but the plot could make that unimportant (see: Independence Day).  It doesn't.  Instead, ridiculous characters do ridiculous things when monsters attack.  For the first fifteen minutes or so of the group's self-imposed quarantine inside the store, there is the reasonable debate that there might not be anything dangerous in the mist.  Okay, that makes sense.  Until people you know die in front of you, it could all seem like hysteria.  That is, until one of the store clerks is killed by a monster's spiked tentacles in the loading dock area.  There's a lot of blood afterward and Thomas Jane chopped a tentacle off with a fire axe.  Okay, so there's clear physical proof, so now everybody can get on the same page.  For reasons that are beyond rational thought, Andre Braugher's character refuses to look at the blood or tentacle, assuming that it is a trick.  In fact, only a handful of people take a look at the evidence.  Personally, I would want to see bloody mist-borne killer tentacle parts, but that's just me.

The group splinters after this scene.  Six or seven people stay reasonable (read: the mist is dangerous, so let's wait this one out), a few more choose to be skeptical about the monsters and make a run for it (bad idea) and the rest apparently become early apocalyptic Christians, led by Marcia Gay Harden.  I've got nothing against religion or the Planter's products that can come with it, but people going from normal to "it's-the-end-of-the-world-let's-sacrifice-a-child" in under 48 hours is a bit more than I can chew.  There's a smaller contingent that just commit suicide.  As the plot progresses, Thomas Jane and his friends confront threats from the mist and from their fellow townspeople and are forced to blah blah blah.  Do you really want the details?  You know they have to go out in the mist eventually.  The movie's called The Mist, after all, not Waiting Patiently For the Mist to Evaporate.

As the movie goes on, this movie's logic gets a little lost.  Thomas Jane and co. change their tactics as it suits them.  They want to stay in the grocery store, where it's relatively safe.  But, when someone is clearly going to die, they go out into the mist to reach the pharmacy next door.  Sure, it's heroic, but the tentacle monster should have been all over them, but wasn't.  Instead, the monsters switch types throughout the film.  First, it was spiked tentacles, then prehistoric-sized bugs and mini-pterodactyls, then big spiders and later mammoth sized monsters.  No one ever says the words "monster" or "dinosaur" in this film, though.  That is hard for me to believe.  There is no reason given for this evolution, if that's what it is.  The monsters could just be taking turns, for all we know.  I hate that the film makes a half-assed attempt to explain where these creatures come from (another dimension, FYI), but never tackles the issue of why they only get attacked by one monster type at a time.

I get the basic premise of this story.  Individuals are reasonable, but groups are irrational.  Or, if you like the story, you can argue that it is about the lengths that ordinary people will go to under extraordinary circumstances.  What.  Ev.  Er.  That doesn't excuse the carelessness of this plot/script.  Frank Darabont has done an excellent job adapting Stephen King's work for the screen before and has done a good job directing those same films (The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), but here he comes up short.  You can blame the source material, but Darabont could have changed anything he wanted to.  To be more realistic, he could have had the townspeople spend a longer time in the grocery store.  All you need to do is put "Day 3" up on the screen, kill some people with giant spiders, and then fade to black for "Day 11," when some characters commit suicide.  I can buy that.  But the degree of hopelessness in this film in such a compressed period of time is disheartening.  On the bright side, I never cared about any characters, so there's no problem when they die.  So, you win some and you lose some.

The ending to the movie is a little controversial because it deviates from King's original short story.  It shouldn't be a problem for fans of King in general or the story in particular; King signed off on the new ending, adding that he wished he had thought of it first.  I won't give the ending away, but I will say this: if you watch the movie and are enjoying it, this ending will seriously upset you.  If, like me, you thought this movie could fertilize your garden, then the ending might elicit a chuckle.