Movies
‘The Shining’ Hotel Needs You to Design Their New Maze!
The century-old Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado is the inspiration behind Stephen King’s “The Shining,” which would eventually be adapted into a feature film by the late Stanley Kubrick.
One of the most infamous scenes in the history of horror comes when Danny and his mother are chased through the hotel’s maze by a maddened Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson).
Now, the Stanley Hotel is having a competition to help design a brand new maze!
Check out full details below.
Here’s the press release:
The historic Stanley Hotel is excited to announce a public competition to design a 61,500 sq. ft. hedge maze inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).
The contest will attract designers, both amateur and professional, from around the world who will have an opportunity to put their work and name on permanent display at the iconic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
The Maze will serve as an homage to the film, which was itself inspired by author Stephen King’s experience at The Stanley Hotel. It also will commemorate the 20 year anniversary of the current ownership of the hotel, which began May 1st, 1994.
“There are few hotels in the world that share a history and story as unique as that of the Stanley Hotel,” said John W. Cullen, owner of the property. “I am thrilled to share this special moment in my life and the hotel’s history. We have built this place together over the years and I’m excited to invite everyone to be a part of its legacy through this special design contest.”
In true Colorado spirit, the hedge maze will be comprised of 1,600 to 2,000 Alpine Currant hedge bushes and will be a prominent feature on the hotel’s picturesque front lawn. A placard with the contest winner’s name will be placed at the site of the maze.
The ribbon-cutting for the maze will take place on the opening night of the 3rd annual Stanley Film Festival on April 30th, 2015.
The winning design will be chosen by a special panel of Estes Park residents, Stanley Hotel employees and film festival staff. The contest winner will have their name placed on a recognition placard in the center of the maze.
Aspiring designers and Stanley Hotel enthusiasts scroll below for contest and submission details. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2015.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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