Why is the horror film classic The Shining not scary at all?

Ready Player One not only made Spielberg the first director to achieve 65.438+0 billion box office, but also made sharping really angry. Kubrick, as a director admired by Spielberg personally, is even one of the greatest directors in film history. It is really humorous that his masterpiece is paid attention to by a commercial film.

Let's take a look at his most famous film, 200 1 A Space Odyssey. To tell the truth, it is not easy for most viewers to stay awake after watching the movie. As a well-known classic of horror movies, The Shining has never been able to get rid of the label of "not scary at all", so it is not difficult to understand that Kubrick's popularity in the Mainland is far from his achievements.

The film tells the story of a writer named Jack (played by Jack Nicholson), who, because he has no creative idea, takes his weird-looking wife Wendy and mysterious son Danny to a hotel as a night watchman, then goes crazy and tries to kill his wife and children.

Many people are disappointed after reading it. In the face of doubt, it is obvious that "you don't understand at all" can't solve the problem.

As a film that has been talked about by fans for 38 years, even Spielberg put it in the film as the biggest egg in Reserve Team One. Sharping is by no means overestimated. Numerous interpretations and comments over the years are enough for people who are really interested in movies to know more. In addition to the film, there is also a documentary about Shapin, Room 237, and the behind-the-scenes tidbits of The Shining filmed by Kubrick's daughter. Some in-depth interpretations are equally interesting, and some can even be said to be imaginative.

According to the hotel manager, because the hotel was built on the cemetery after the Indian massacre, the hotel was decorated with various Indian styles, and even a red jar with Indian heads printed on it, so it is speculated that this is a movie about the massacre. Think about it carefully, is it the epitome of those genocide killers when Jack frantically waved a butcher knife at his family?

There are also fans who watched the movie frame by frame and found that just after the director's name was turned over, a Kubrick's head appeared in a certain sky!

The Shining is like a treasure decorated by Kubrick. As long as you observe carefully, you can have endless fun.

Let me start with why sharping doesn't look scary at all.

one

The first is the different ways of watching. As an audience who likes Kubrick very much, I feel this is very obvious.

I have seen sharping twice before, including writing articles for * * * four times this time. I watched it on the computer for the first time. At that time, I was deeply impressed by the audio-visual language of the film, and I was not particularly shocked. Later, I was lucky enough to have a chance to watch it again on the big screen. The experience is completely different from the first time. I was really scared at that time. I remember sitting in a chair for a long time after watching it.

Computer (mobile phone) and screen sometimes have completely different feelings when watching some movies. After all, movies are the art of the big screen. The big screen not only means more information, but also means the expressive force of the lens language, which can be fully exerted.

For example, a close-up is also a scene in The Shining. Jack's face is crazy. It can be seen in cinemas and mobile phones, and the effect is simply a world of difference.

There are also some lens scheduling, such as depth of field lens scheduling. If the screen is not big enough, you may miss the most classic scene in Citizen Kane. Close-up shows parents talking and young Kane playing outside the window. If you miss this scene, you miss the secret of "Rosebud" (the case is taken from the interview material of Zige).

two

Second, time. Most movies can become classics because they have successfully stood the test of time. This does not mean that the audience today will have exactly the same impression as they did decades ago. This is even more obvious in Psycho directed by Hitchcock in 1960. Both of them are classics of horror movies, but the price of becoming classics is to be imitated constantly, from story structure to shooting techniques and classic shots.

It is not uncommon to imitate and pay tribute to the bathing scene in Psycho, and even the comedy The Big Bang Theory has been spoofed.

As for the part where The Shining got into the elevator, Stephen Chow also paid tribute in Kung Fu, so that when we really saw the original, it had already lost its freshness.

However, there are still some differences in the story structure between the two. Psycho has a hidden ending. In order not to let the audience know the ending of the film in advance, it is said that Hitchcock bought all the original novels of new york at that time, and The Shining's story was relatively dull. In fact, the keen audience can guess the general ending of the story from the sharpening fragment of Danny's elevator door and twins at the beginning, which is one of the reasons why many viewers find the film boring.

three

This film is adapted from Stephen King's original novel The Shining. Kubrick, a perfectionist with a strong desire for control, basically changed the original novel beyond recognition except for screening some core stories, so that Stephen King said that he didn't like the film very much, and then he personally wrote and produced a TV version of The Shining, which was basically faithful to the original, but the evaluation was average. (If the original party is interested, you can have a look. )

We have noticed that most traditional horror films have some "supernatural factors". The most typical ones are zombie movies in Hong Kong and some ghost movies abroad, as well as all kinds of bizarre deaths in Death Comes, which are difficult to explain with scientific common sense. People are always afraid of the unknown.

These were originally the characteristics of the original novel The Shining, but Kubrick almost completely denied this content, and almost none of the scary ghosts in the novel appeared in the film.

Doug, Danny's friend in the original novel, was originally a ghost who existed alone and directly became Danny's second personality in the film. As for the twins, the woman in room 237 and the people at the party are all illusions in the eyes of a family of three. Moreover, there are many kinds of animal-shaped plants outside the hotel in the original novel, which are the guardians of the hotel and even come back to life. Kubrick also gave up a point and directly changed it into a maze.

There are almost no supernatural factors in the film, and most of them can be explained by hallucinations caused by claustrophobia.

Kubrick tries to strike a balance between psychology and supernatural power, making you think that the supernatural world can be explained from the psychological level.

No wonder Stephen King cursed that Kubrick knew nothing about terror.

But there are a few places that are hard to explain.

For example:

Do Danny and the chef really have the ability to be sharp?

Do Jack and his wife have this ability?

Who finally helped Jack open the door of the storage room, Shapin's strength or his son (his second personality)?

192 1 Why is Jack in the last close-up photo?

The reason why it is difficult to explain is whether you believe there are supernatural factors in movies, which has a great influence on understanding movies.

four

Usually, in order to create suspense, horror films will deliberately darken the overall tone of the film, and even many times, except for the characters, the lens is surrounded by darkness. For example, the classic sci-fi horror film Alien is terrible, because there is a monster who kills people at any time in the dark. This suspense effect of suppressing tension and danger at any time is an essential formula for most horror films.

If you watch it carefully, you will find that The Shining is very different from this kind of horror movies. Although the background of the story is arranged in a closed environment, you will find that the hotel is in a bright state most of the time in the whole movie, which is contrary to the above viewpoint and completely inconsistent with the method of creating suspense effect in horror movies. Why did Kubrick choose to shoot The Shining like this? Didn't the great movie master even have this basic knowledge?

Here, I want to mention a shooting device-camera stabilizer, which is simply a technology that allows photographers to greatly reduce lens shake when shooting. Since 1970s, it has been widely used in the film industry.

Many directors, such as Kubrick, martin scorsese and paul thomas anderson, like to use the camera stabilizer to shoot touching shots for a long time to show the inner world and scenes of the characters, so in The Shining, he decided to use this shooting technique out of personal preference.

The disadvantage of this shooting method is that it can't be polished at will when shooting in a fixed way, because most of the lenses are moving long lenses, and the lighting tools can't keep moving with the lenses. In order to make the shooting effect better, Kubrick can only choose to illuminate the whole hotel.

The end result is that the film has become a Kubrick-style horror film, in which the excellent lens scheduling is fascinating, and it may also make some fans who are obsessed with the elements of horror films feel nothing.

Having said that, these contents are not the shortcomings of The Shining, but the differences between it and other traditional horror movies.

The movie is not really not scary, but Kubrick has no intention of attracting and intimidating the audience through vomiting and bloodthirsty modeling. In order to create a gloomy atmosphere, he used almost all advanced artistic and technical means.

Every film engraved with Kubrick's label has a similarity, that is, at first glance, it may feel bland, and after a while, it will be more experienced, and then when you look back, you will find something that you can't see on the horizon.

Just like a glass of wine, it has an endless aftertaste.

His works are praised almost as much as they are cursed, which also applies to The Shining.