Lately, I’ve been taking much pleasure in jumping knee deep into watching psychological thrillers/horror. It’s sort-of backed by science that when you’re stressed, scaring yourself may prove beneficial (or at least in my own mind.) While I’ve never been a horror-adjacent fiend myself, lately, I have found comfort in strange things (as long as they’re not physically dirty), but it’s okay if your psyche is muddied in some way (something else to unpack in therapy lol.)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) has to be one of most horrid (also one of my favourite) ones so far, though I’d say that the book was much more moralistic and one I could argue about it if I had to do it for a literature class, and the movie varied greatly (so much that I wouldn’t actually want to compare them.) Also the soundtrack was ace, and I find myself listening to what my friends call ‘spooky sounds’ as I drive. Maybe pretending to be in a spooky movie is cathartic in some way, I’m not sure. Anyway, I keep rewatching the ending when Al Bowlly’s warm yet haunting voice drifts in. It’s fun.
However, I don’t have much good things to say about the film-making process (after seeing the making of by vivian kubrick on youtube), but it made me think a lot. In our pursuit for perfection, do we often end up doing things we might not typically condone in order to get the ‘perfect shot’? I really don’t know. Humans are complex, greedy, varied and judgemental creatures (myself included.)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
