Misanthropic but never scary.

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2017)

I've seen Stanley Kubrick's The Shining 3 times. I've had 2 repeating of this film not due to my enthusiasm, but because I was looking for that 'tick' that so many people get when they hoot & holler about this being the best horror movie ever made. And, despite me ranking it up a 6 from a 5, I was still not compelled.
The Good:
Very easy to talk about the many things that qualify this as a film made by the mastermind of Kubrick (despite it being his worst IMHO): the cinematography is one-of-a-kind. The hotel breathes in and out depending on what the characters are feeling at that moment, almost as if the hotel is breathing. Visual thrills are terrifically done in THe Shining. The elevator gushing blood is beyond cool, the one-takes with the tricycle swerving through the halls are very tense and makes you feel like Danny is going 80 miles an hour on the thing, the rotting water-lopped corpse of a woman slowly rising out of the bath tub, The camera panning to every axe-swing on the bedroom door, awesome stuff!
The Acting: Rewatching The Shining, I had acknowledged that I was harsh on the acting of Shelley Duvall who played Wendy. Kubrick was good at giving each character an identity. Wendy in the film is an intelligent woman and can be a reliable team leader; but her big heart and compassion, despite being a quality, is what allowed her to ignore her intuition early on in her marriage.
Jack Nicholson is the quintessential maniac. Just the slightest shift of the eye or brow and you're convinced you are watching a maniac. Apart from those wide shots of despair, it's Jack that makes the movie.
The Bad: If I am watching a horror movie, I have to be immersed in it to get some sort of reaction. This is where The Shining fails me. From the beginning, you can see Jack is a closet narcissist who is trying to compartmentalize his real self into the darkest corners of his mind in order to be this projection of who he wants to be. He doesn't love his wife or Danny, he only loves himself. Kubrick is very good at giving nuances like such to his characters. Jack is a piece of # from the get-go. It's not the house that gets him, it's HIM who gets to him. His self- obsession, constant need for solitude, the need to feel in control by attacking others is a recipe for classic narcissist. The part that's hard for me to digest is that Wendy, considering how empathetic and compassionate she is, could not see Jack for who he was long before he went full 'cuckoo'. With that said, it makes the cat-and-mouse chase less engaging. Surprise! He's crazy! Yeah, no sh't! The other problems I had were the 2-dimensional dialogue in the beginning. Was I watching a 70's crime drama? Kubrick always has intense dialogue in his films, so it made me wonder why he opted for the 'backstory of the hotel' nonsense. Maybe it was a jab at the book and the horror industry? Seemed very out of place especially since the film picks up with a much more visceral tone in the second half.
I couldn't honestly hold this next to masterpieces like Psycho, John Carpenter's The Thing, Carrie or horror granddaddy of all horror flicks The Exorcist.
If I were to pick, I would watch A Clockwork Orange for the 12th time instead of The Shining for the 4th. I'll revisit the film in a few years and see if my thoughts change.