Editorials
Sundance ’11: ‘Park City at Midnight’ Films Announced!
For the past several years Bloody Disgusting has been doing heavy coverage on the Sundance Film Festival, the largest and most important film festival in the Nation. While the fest, which takes place January 10-20 in Park City, Utah, doesn’t focus too much on the horror genre, they have premiered some major flicks ranging from Saw to The Last Exorcism, The Blair Witch Project, Open Water, High Tension and even The Signal. Of the past several years, the coming 2011 Sundance looks quite promising including screenings of The Troll Hunter, Hobo With a Shotgun, The Woman and more! Read on for the genre films playing this January and watch for tons of updates in the coming hours.
Director: Chris Kentis; Screenwriter: Chris Kentis and Laura Lau. Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Eric Sheffer Stevens, Julia Taylor Ross
“Silent House follows a young woman troubled a childhood trauma. Whilst visiting her family’s isolated summer home with her father and uncle, when they learn they are not alone in the house. The terrifying 80 minute period is told from Sarah’s point of view. Elizabeth Olsen, sister to Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, takes the lead role.”
Director: Jason Eisener; Screenwriter: Johnathan Davies Cast: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth, Gregory Smith, Brian Downey.
“A hobo hops from a train with dreams of a fresh life in a new city, but instead finds himself trapped in an urban hell. When he witnesses a brutal robbery, he realizes the only way to deliver justice is with a shotgun in his hands and two shells in the chamber.” World Premiere
Director and screenwriter: Calvin Lee Reeder. Cast: Lindsay Pulsipher, Robert Longstreet, Matt Olsen, LynneCompton, Barlow Jacobs, Chadwick Brown, Jed Maheu, Roger M. Mayer.
“After surviving a brutal car accident, a simple farm woman limps down the road into the nightmarish unknown.” World Premiere
Director: Andre Ovredal. Cast: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Hans Morten Hansen, Johanna Mørch, Tomas Alf Larsen.
“A group of student filmmakers get more than they bargained for when tangling with a man tasked with protecting Norway from giant trolls.” International Premiere
Director: Lucky McKee; Screenwriters: Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee. Cast: Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand.
“When a successful country lawyer captures and attempts to “civilize” the last remaining member of a violent clan that has roamed the Northeast coast for decades, he puts the lives of his family in jeopardy.” World Premiere
Director: Michael Tully. Cast: Robert Longstreet, Onur Tukel, Michael Tully, Rachel Korine, Mark Robinson, John Maringouin.
“A reclusive sports hustler returns home to his family farm after years of absence to reunite with his two eccentric, unhinged and emotionally damaged brothers.” World Premiere
Director: Alex Stapleton. Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, James Cameron, Roger Corman.
“Tracks the triumphant rise of Hollywood’s most prolific writer-director-producer, the true godfather of independent filmmaking.” World Premiere
Director and screenwriter: Todd Rohal. Cast: Steve Little, Robert Longstreet, Walter Dalton, Miki Ann Maddox, Koko Lanham.
“After becoming disinterested with the church, a priest tracks down his old classmate, a former metalhead whom he idolized in high school. When the two embark on a canoeing trip together, all hell breaks loose.” World Premiere
Director and screenwriter: Madeleine Olnek. Cast: Lisa Haas, Susan Ziegler, Jackie Monahan, Cynthia Kaplan, Dennis Davis, Alex Karpovsky, Rae C Wright.
“A shy greeting card store employee unknowingly falls for a lesbian space alien while two government agents closely track their romance.” World Premiere
Director Shunji Iwai. Kevin Zegers, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rachael Leigh Cook, Kristin Kreuk, Aoi Yu, and Adelaide Clemens all star.
“The Japanese-Canadian production follows a seemingly normal young man prowls online chatrooms and message boards for the perfect girl who will ensure his survival.
Director and screenwriter: Kevin Smith. Cast: Michael Parks, Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, John Goodman, Melissa Leo.
“A group of misfits encounter extreme fundamentalism in Middle America.”
Directed and written by Kim Jee-woon. Stars Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik
“A violent revenge thriller about a young secret agent tracking the serial killer who murdered his fiancee.”
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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