the_wolfs_howl wrote:Warning to anyone who might be curious and doesn't know this already: There's some pretty blatantly implied demonic possession going on, and a scene with full-on female nudity (that can be skipped easily).
I don't think
The Shining's is a horror universe that needs demonic possession. Here's my reasoning. In the last shot of the film, which doesn't give away the ending, we see Jack Torrence as the life of the party among the jet set in a photograph signed July 4th, 1921. In other words,
he was the one who killed his wife and twin daughters gifted with the psychic powers of those "who shine". That is how they show Danny the scene of their death, much like Danny sends out an S.O.S. to Dick Hallorann after Jack has sabotaged the radio. They say abuse is often cyclical from one generation to the next, and
The Shining draws upon the horror motif of the generational curse while conveying the theme that the curse can be broken. Stephen King has told stories about inhuman evil. But the evil of the ghosts of the jet set is all too human, the kind of evil that builds a posh hotel on a site marked by genocide of indigenous peoples, the kind of evil that throws grand parties upon the mass slaughter of World War I. In other words, the kind of evil that makes a torrent of blood, one of the film's most famous symbolic images.
The ghosts get Jack on their side in 3 ways. A.) They feed Jack's alcoholism to win his loyalty and drop his psychological inhibitions to acts of violence. The alcohol is termed "white-man's burden" in ironic evocation of Rudyard Kipling's sense of the British colonial mandate, and to the opiate of the reservations. B) They allow his psychosis to build with the extreme isolation, which they relieve with grand parties to condition him to believe that all good things come from them. In each of these they deliberately put a fulcrum between Wendy's efforts to connect and maintain ties to humanity. C) The bathroom talk on the values of American racist patriarchy, and the violence it must impose to maintain its power and privilege. It's blunt, but it is what a lot of people in 1921 believed, as they made clear with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the wave of lynchings. In the 1920's, the KKK managed to take control of Colorado's politics, all the way up to Mayor Stapleton of Denver. In the end, Jack is convinced to do what he has already done. There's a certain mystery to this. Does this imply something like Plato's notion of
anamnesis? Or must Jack be convinced every time? Why does Jack come back to repeat the cycle while they remain unchanged in all those decades?
I think the function of the nude scene is to convey the mythological elements of the narrative. On one level, the woman in Room 237 is a siren or a river nymph to draw Jack’s desire away from Wendy. Jack has spoken of his family as a kind of possession, i.e. “Let me go
collect my family.” Lloyd the ghostly bartender has indulged Jack in a drunken misogynistic ranting in which he reveals he considers Wendy to be a kind of reproductive machine, but also by that token an object of desire. To get Jack to murder his family, they have to convince him of the same precedence as the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, as it ruled with regard to the question of slavery of the right of the master to dispose of his property however he saw fit. So by sending her in to tempt and sexually humiliate Jack, the ghosts have got Jack by the balls. This is reinforced when she leaves strangle-marks on Danny to destroy the trust between Jack and Wendy, and so push him further toward their side. Another parallel is to the Lady of the Lake who bestows Excalibur to King Arthur, although he is an unworthy hero. The myth of the psychic powers of those “who shine” is treated as a myth of the holy grail. Danny is the young Arthur, and Dick Hallorann is the wise old magus Merlin. Hallorann feeds Danny ice cream in a beautiful lustrous grail dish while explaining the special powers they share to link the grail to the shining. Like Herod’s efforts to murder little Jesus, or Carrie’s encounter with the Salem Witch Scare mentality, the potential this raises for change is something the powers that be want to crush. It should also be noted a common interpretation of the holy grail is as a symbol for female sexuality, and the earliest Christian grail legends are basically euphemistic stories about how to ask a girl for her number. Jack has been unable to find the will to reciprocate Wendy’s efforts to connect relationally and sexually, retreating to a novel he isn’t really writing. So here the element of the repressed returns with a vengeance, transforming his character for the worse.
), and the set design was amazing. Anyway, it's a movie about the interminable war between vampires and werewolves, and thankfully the prosthetics and CG were pulled off wonderfully and believably for the most part. Overall, it was a fun movie, but a bit talk-y, if you know what I mean. There was much discussion of the long, sordid history of these two factions who've been fighting for hundreds of years. There were a couple of twists that surprised me, but I didn't really feel invested in any of the characters or care much which side won in the end. I doubt I'll watch it again, but I'm glad I saw it.
This is 
Fun, solid action flick, full of cool fight scenes, parkour chases, and Logan one-liners 
It was fun to get a movie set in Japan, and I got really excited when Hiroyuki Sanada (my favorite Japanese actor) came on screen 
Nothing earth-shattering, but definitely worth a watch if you like Hugh Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine.