Last year, it was revealed that Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez was putting together a horror film he describes as “The Shining in the White House.” While it’s unlikely his vision will feature an axe-wielding Trump and a waterlogged Melania, those hoping for a more literal interpretation of the concept can turn to Late Night With Seth Meyers, which debuted a new animated short in which the Trump clan loses its marbles in quarantine.
All the usual jokes are here—“very stable genius,” hydroxychloroquine, Trump hates Don Jr. and loves Ivanka—but it’s set against some amusing references to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, including a bloody “Redrum” and a nod to Room 237.
The Shining is very much in the cultural consciousness these days. Not only did Mike Flanagan adapt Doctor Sleep, King’s Shining sequel, last year, but HBO Max is currently developing a TV prequel to the story produced by J.J. Abrams.
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Just…please…no more Trump in my life than the crushing, depressing amount I normally get each day. Please.
Yeah no part of me wants to watch this. Patton Oswalt settled this kind of thing already.
Who wants to tell him?
Look, this doesn’t make me a good person, but ever since he announced he was taking his anti-malaria drug to fight coronavirus I’ve been hoping some adverse side-effects would take care of the world’s Trump problem for us.
This stuff is so tired and weak. The worst thing about so much hacky humor like this is that the people who enable Trump and allowed him to get where he is today always skate by untouched.
I hate that fucking guy so much. So much.
We know which character Trumpy is:
I despise Donald Trump as much as any thinking person does, but this wasn’t especially funny.More generally, Trump is so toxic and dangerous that poking fun at him feels like whistling past the graveyard, or worse, normalizes his malignancy.I still think using humor is an effective way to take on Trump, but the jokes must have teeth. John Oliver is someone who I think does it very effectively. Pointing out for the 1,000th time that Trump has small hands and wants to fuck his daughter is not effective, politically or comedically.
I think we’ve already seen the peak of Trump jokes, and it’s John Mulaney’s “horse loose in a hospital” routine. It captures the true surreal bleakness of the situation, and doesn’t let the people who empowered Trump off the hook. (Perhaps my favourite part goes, “Sometimes I ask people, ‘Hey, why did you let the horse into the hospital?’ And they say, ‘Well, the hospital was inefficient!’”)
Agree. Horse in a hospital is genius.Sarah Cooper’s Trump lip syncs are a pretty funny reminder of how fucking stupid Trump really is, too.
How will he ever recover from this one
This is some weak shit…
It’s amazing how in the T era, Colbert thrives and soars and Meyers … well, Meyers produces this.
Speaking of ‘The Shining’ homages in popular culture, I’d heard the one in ‘Ready Player One’ was really impressive, so I found a clip of it on YouTube. Am I the only one who didn’t see what all the fuss was about? I thought, “Yeah, that looks a lot like ‘The Shining’ I guess” and didn’t get much more from it.