Horror Movie Assignment
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King’s book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick’s movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel’s labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who’s settled in for a long winter’s hibernation. As many have pointed out, King’s protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick’s Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him–all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director’s fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying–but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King’s dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there–but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick’s The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there’s no place to hide… –Jim Emerson, Amazon.com
A married couple with a small son are employed to look after a resort hotel high in the Colorado mountains. As a result they are the sole occupants during the long winter. The hotel manager warns them not to accept the job because of a tragedy that occurred during the winter of 1970. Based on the book by Stephen King.
Assignment: 1) Write an essay explaining why The Shining is a genuine horror film. What makes it an outstanding example of that genre?
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Use one of these web articles:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201410/the-top-ten-things-make-horror-movies-scary
https://www.boredpanda.com/horror-movie-cliches/ with films the word “clichés” is often referred to as “tropes.”
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-horror-movies-ever
Also, go to rottentomatoes.com to find a review from when the film was brand new, 1980.
You need five paragraphs: intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Use four transitionals altogether. Use an interesting beginning, starting with a quote, an anecdote, or a question.
• quote your sources, including one quote from each source, at least one film review from a top critic and one article.
Please read the above web articles. Now respond to each of these points:
a) Write about how well the film we watched represents horror films, how it
exemplifies or demonstrates the conventions, the stereotypes or tropes. Include the
kind of horror movie conventions (mysterious houses; dark, stormy nights;
odd children, or odd older people) and themes: fear of the dark, fear of
illness, of pain, of being different, of disfigurement, of death, of Satan, etc.,
that you see demonstrated
b) What time of day do most horror scenes occur in, and why do you think that is typical?
c) What kinds of weapons, if any, are typical of horror movies and what kinds of weapons rarely appear? What weapons, if any, were in our film?
d) Is there any connection between religious beliefs and appreciation of horror films? (Some writers feel that there is a connection and that people who are religious tend to like horror films because they are receptive to concepts of spirituality and the afterlife—Heaven and Hell, of the existence of Satan because they accept the existence of God, etc.) Do you agree? Is it relevant to this film?
e) How did the film display or defy the above characteristics of horror movies? Use three body paragraphs, reasons it qualifies as a horror movie, or not—you may have three reasons for, two reasons for and one against, and so forth.
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Other recommended horror films for your entertainment:
Psycho (1960 original version), Carrie (1976 original version), The Exorcist (1973), The Night of the Living Dead (1968 or 1990 remake), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018)
