Film: The Shining
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 at 04:00pm
Waterville Opera House
Maine Film Center
93 Main Street,
The late great Shelley Duvall reached, perhaps ironically, her widest audience in Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining. Truly terrifying in so many ways, The Shining is based on Stephen King's novel of the same name and was famously shot with Kubrick’s meticulous perfectionism over the course of a mind-and-soul-boggling 56 weeks. Duvall gave a performance completely unlike any other as the justly terrified wife of increasingly psychotic writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson). When Torrance takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel with the hope of curing his writer's block, his wife Wendy (Duvall) and son Danny find themselves dragged into a seemingly inescapable nightmare. Danny suffers from disturbing visions as Jack investigates the hotel's secrets, and as Jack begins spiraling into madness Wendy is forced to defend herself and her son from the man she loves. The Shining is seriously creepy stuff, up there with the most soul-chilling horror films ever made—and the most unconventional ones.