Double Feature! (Well, kinda) The Shining and It Follows

Alright! So yesterday I didn't watch anything (shame on me) so I sorta made up for it today. Not really, but ya know... kinda. I decided to do a double feature with The Shining and a repeater from just a few days ago, It Follows. I know, I know, I just watched it. But fuck you, I wanted to watch it again I liked it so much. So there.

The Shining: OK, full disclosure here and I'm going to lose all my horror film cred in saying this: I have never seen The Shining from front to back. There. I said it. I'm sorry. Really. I'm sure I've seen the equivalent of the entire movie on TV reruns or elsewhere (enough to know the entire plot, that plus just being culturally aware) but I've never sat and watched the entire thing.

That unpleasantness out of the way, Kubrick's The Shining, as everyone knows by now, is a masterpiece. The care and obsession Kubrick puts into a film is in full force here and the movie is a piece of art. The colors, the framing, the characterization, everything is meticulous and perfect. Even if it takes quite literally torturing one of your actors into near madness, Kubrick created a milestone.

Yeah, read about it. Kubrick purposefully drove Shelley Duvall to nut town.

Now, Jack Torrance. Is he really the villain here? I mean, if I had naggy Olive Oyl for a wife and a possessed, creeper little kid who has lengthy conversations with his talking finger, I just might just want to kill my family with an axe too. Couple that with having no alcohol for miles and a bad case of writers block and man... you'd basically have no choice but to kill your family, right? If nothing else than to at least save them from this alcohol-less wasteland. In addition to that, I love the projection of writers block both Stephen King and Kubrick have so obviously projected onto Jack Torrance. Writers block sucks and every writer gets it. It makes you want to just unleash and run an axe through a door (see above). 

All my (maybe?) humorous commentary aside, The Shining is more than deserving of it's place as one of the best horror movies of all time. It's a beautiful, terror-filled mystery that's brilliant in every way from top to bottom. The madness, the question of the reality of the haunting, it's just damn fine.

10/10

It Follows: Yeah, I watched It Follows again. My review, surprisingly, hasn't changed in a matter of days (go figure). One thing that I really did notice this time around was just how good the soundtrack is. Seriously, I think it'll go down in history as one of the best horror (maybe not just horror?) soundtracks of all time. And this movie... still damn, damn good.

9.5/10 (still)