With benefit of hindsight and a clear perspective, the film is obviously a disappointment...

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2007)

Stanley Kubrick takes an arguably weak Stephen King literary tomb and possibly reads more into the material than what King had originally cooked up. Jack Nicholson interviews to be the winter caretaker of a mammoth, isolated Colorado hotel and immediately feels at home in the lonely vastness of its eerie expanse; his jittery wife and muted, psychic young son aren't so sure about the surroundings, especially after Dad starts exhibiting uncontrolled behavior. Once again, Kubrick displays his fabulous grasp of film-technique, resulting in some sensational scenes (particularly the opening drive up the mountain, the child's first meeting with the psychic cook, the overhead shot of the maze, and a funny/scary bit with Shelley Duvall fending off crazy Jack with a baseball bat). Unfortunately, the plot is all gummed up; it takes in past and present incidents, characters as mind demons, and a boy's fear of his father and fails to make all the elements cohere. Worse, the pieces don't make this much of a scary puzzle--it's too confounding to be truly terrifying--and the finale (filled with lots of freaky goings-on) releases all the tension Kubrick has worked so hard to build up. Some may see the confusing debauchery and the blood-filled elevator as Kubrick's comment on the horror genre, his imperviousness to the usual scare-movie tactics--he's above clichés--though what he DOES give us doesn't add up. A great deal of screen-time is spent getting help to the woman and her son (in the form of the cook) and also in locking up Nicholson when he becomes too violent--and both chapters end ridiculously. Was Kubrick gleeful at cutting such corners? If so, he shouldn't have been. "The Shining" feels like a cheat in so many ways that frustration ultimately mitigates the suspense. **1/2 from ****