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Rating: 7/10 (28 May 2011)

The Shining is characteristic of Kubrik's slow, almost glacial, cinematic rhythm, with events unfolding over a long time scale. This worked magnificently well in 2001, but even by A Clockwork Orange was beginning to become a mannerism. The drawn out nature of Barry Lyndon is one of the points against it, but it could be argued that such an approach works better in a horror film like The Shining where anticipation really is half the fun.
Kubrik has a painter's eye for details such as colour, texture and lighting and all his films are visually stunning, The Shining (and the equally flawed Barry Lyndon) being no exception. Some scenes are breath taking and the overall look and atmosphere of the film is exceptional.
However these atmospheric sequences are used to cover deficiencies in the plot. Nicholson goes from normal (as normal as he ever is) to hallucinating nut in one quick step. It all seems too easy. Some schlock horror clichés (creepy twins, dead bodies, rivers of blood) are no substitute for what should have been a subtle and gradual descent into madness.
Without that psychological subtlety, the film becomes a series of familiar horror scenes: An 'old dark house'; a man who turns up to help only to be brutally killed; a final conventional chase. We've seen it all before and it is not surprising that the original audiences and the author himself were unimpressed.
Another issue is the music. We are used to Kubrik using classical pieces in a new and unusual fashion, the blue Danube during a space flight, for instance, or the Thieving Magpie during a fight. Here, he merely selects a series of creepy and atmospheric pieces in the hope they will impart creepiness and atmosphere to what would be very ordinary scenes. In effect, Kubrik piggybacks on the work of the composers.
Kubrik even recycles the scrunched-up face close-ups from A Clockwork Orange too, with less purpose here. It does not help that the kid is not much of an actor, but he is not to blame really, since no child deserves to have the full weight of a film placed upon him. But Shelley Duvall's performance is truly awful, so wooden that I can hardly believe it. Scatman Crothers puts in the best turn, but is sadly not in it enough to make a difference.
But then perhaps we should not be too critical of Duvall, being as she was, required to act scenes over and over while Kubrik tries to realise the vision of clinical perfection he was apparently aiming at.
This is certainly the work of a great artist in decline.