And so we come to the end of another Week of Review, though
admittedly a much shorter one. American Horror Story: Hotel will be
premiering later this tonight so for the final film in my hotel horror marathon
I’ve chosen the most blatantly obvious example there is: The Shining. The Shining is considered by many to be
the greatest horror film ever made and its depth, complexity, and importance
continues to echo down the long halls of cinema to this very day. The film has been analyzed and
deconstructed nearly to death with whole documentaries created about its
possible meanings such as the death of the American family, the shameful
treatment of Native Americans, and even claims that it was Stanley Kubrick’s
confession to faking the Moon Landing.
With a film this well known, this talked about, this
discussed and considered by academia, nerdom, and the mass populous alike I
normally wouldn’t talk about but I wanted to cover a certain subject that
always tends to linger around the film; its connection to the book of the same
name. If you’ve never read it The Shining the book is actually an
incredibly different animal to the film and a decidedly less interesting or
terrifying horror story, and I’m going to talk about how and why.
