A major disappointment.

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2004)

This has got to be the most overrated movie in the history of film. I just watched it for the first time, expecting the best of the best, and it was quite a letdown. The sets and music are great, of course, but Kubrick seems to have forgotten one very important thing: to make a horror movie horrifying, you have to have likable characters. That way, when bad things start happening, the audience feels for them.
What we have here, however, is a documentary on the most dysfunctional family in the world. Isn't this supposed to be about a loving husband and father who goes insane? Jack Nicholson is brilliant at portraying total insanity, but there's no gradual shift into at all. He looks like he's about to snap from scene one. His wife is a whimpering, nervous wreck who does not seem to trust him at any point throughout the movie. And the kid, Danny, is just a weird little nut. Who can identify with these people?
Another major problem is that there is no clear storyline here. The whole first half of the movie is about the kid's psychic abilities, and then it does a total switch and focuses on Jack Nicholson being crazy. What was the point of spending all that time on Danny? It seems like it is foreshadowing something, but it never amounts to anything. I guess Danny is the first one to see ghosts in the house, but that is not a big enough plot point to spend the entire first half of the movie on.
Other than some incredibly creepy music and sets, there is nothing really scary in this movie. It is fun to see Jack Nicholson ham it up, of course, but there is no scariness involved when you spend the entire movie waiting listlessly for him to pick up an ax, rather than being shocked when he goes from lovable to psychotic. Instead, he goes from obviously-wanting-to-release-a-ton-of-built-up-aggression to psychotic, which is extremely inferior.
6/10 stars, and that is being generous.