Terror Is Not An Option In This Bloated "Masterpiece" Of Horror

Rating: 4/10 (14 July 2011)

Well, I'll give The Shining it's dues... it has excellent creepy sets and meticulous cinematography typical of Kubrick now armed with a steadi-cam but it is all mostly wasted in a underwhelming average horror movie.
Because the film lacks a strong psychological backbone, in fact, it is spineless. The Shining does not play on audience's minds like I feel it should have.
The problem lies in the fact, Kubrick lent his own interpretation to one of Stephen King's greatest novels ever. A book that shouldn't be adapted into film anyways. He stuffed this movie -to-the-gills with not even remotely terrifying "ghosts-in-sheets" shocks.
The Shining fails because the director never leaves any room for the imaginations of his audience, it is not an option apparently to Kubrick. The Overlook is never presented as a nebulous threat and thus the claustrophobic excitement is absent. Kubrick fails to enliven the gradual degradation of Jack's sanity in the lens of his camera, there is no intelligent and plausible mounting horror, it lacks episodic precision key to ante up the level of terror and suspense.
And Jack Nicholson is pure ham and beans. Life imitates art.
Kubrick's choice is to formally introduce the Overlook Hotel with "Ello, I am the Overlook Hotel, a place with a dark past, please shake my hand" William Castle glee.
The offerings are a balderdash of flash floods of blood down corridors, two ugly little dead girls stalking Danny for a playmate, a little boy that talks to his finger, a mousy wild-eyed helpless mother (Wendy in the book is a strong independent personality and a looker), and a father that never had a strong grasp on his sanity to begin with.
In the book, Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic and aspiring writer, whom broke his son Danny's arm when the boy was younger and just recently fired from a comfortable prep school teacher job both during alcohol fueled binges. Jack Torrance in the King novel is both terrifying (while he loses his mind over the course of the book) and a pitiful tragedy (as he does prove to love his family). In contrast Kubrick's Jack Torrance is not merely "possessed" but remains disconsolately distant to both wife and son. Danny is often playing alone unsupervised or with his mother. This all boils to the surface in the Overlook Hotel of course. In fact, Jack Torrance pursues this seething hatred unrelented to his own death. Halloran gets axed for trying. Perhaps, Kubrick's imbalanced vision of Jack Torrance had always held his family responsibility for all his shortcomings and failures. I spare no pity for any of these characters.
The Shining leaves me cold, detached, and unperturbed by this overlong banquet of cheap visual scares.