Very good horror film with a brilliant lead actor and masterful direction

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2016)

This film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, stars Jack Nicholson as an author who agrees to take care of the Overlook hotel during the winter with his family, but the feeling of cabin fever and isolation, as well as the hotel's demons, start getting to him and he eventually tries to kill his family.
I personally think this is the best work Kubrick has ever done. I'm sorry, but I don't find Dr. Strangelove funny at all and all of his other films can be weird and make no sense sometimes. That's not to say it doesn't ever happen in this movie, too (I mean, that's why it's an 8/10 not a 10/10), but it just doesn't happen as much and is put to a better effect.
Nicholson was perfectly cast, Duvall's performance was actually quite good and I loved how all of the horror simply came from atmosphere and shots. No cheap jump scares, no clichés and no goofs, just a twisted, creepy, atmospheric story centred on the mind of a future psycho.
One thing I didn't like, though (not about the film itself), was that I went and bought the AU DVD of this film, expecting it to be the same as the US version, because I had only heard that the EU version was shorter. Didn't say anything about AU, but expectations were wrong and I noticed about half and hour of some pretty important and good scenes were cut. Lucky I had the US version on iTunes, though.