'The Chickening' Takes a Huge Bird Dump on Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has been remixed before—a fake trailer makes the film into a happy romantic comedy, underscored by Peter Gabriel’s “Salisbury Hill,” for instance. But that little piece of experimental cinema history will not prepare you for The Chickening, another piece of “remixed, augmented cinema” that turns Stephen King’s haunted hotel into a fast food poultry production facility and resort built on an active volcano.

The short film’s creators, Canadians Nick DenBoer and Davy Force, call this collision between classic film and visual effects “Cinegraffiti.” In their minds, it’s the “ultimate neonostalgic visual feast for this digital age.”

In The Chickening, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as a senior chief night manager for “Charbay’s Chicken World,” the aforementioned fast food chicken facility and resort built on a volcano. Torrance’s wife, Wendy, is basically the same as in The Shining, but DenBoer and Force turn their son, Danny, into a 42-year old “manchild,” and a disturbing-looking one at that.

When Torrance tries Charbay’s experimental BBQ sauce, “The Shiney,” things go really bonkers—that is to say, he begins to slowly morph into a chicken man. This forces a “hyperdimensional alien” named Scatmok (the remixed character Dick Hallorann, played by Scatman Crothers), Danny, and his snarky Italian finger man named Tony to fight back. The rest is just as diabolically stupid-genius.

Although DenBoer and Force call The Chickening a “first of its kind in remixed, augmented cinema,” it’s not 100% true—at least not conceptually. For those looking for even more culture-remixing madness, look no further than Steve Oedekerk’s Kung Pow! Enter the Fist.

Click here to more work by Nick DenBoer, and here for Davy Force’s other films.

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