S10 Review's The Shining (1980)

Rating: 2/10 (14 February 2003)

Jack Torrance (Nicholson) is a down-on-his-luck writer trying hard to rebound back. Jack applies for and gets a position as a winter overseer of an old Colorado hotel named the Overlook. With the hotel shut down for the winter Jack will be solely responsible for maintaining it while it lay silent and unoccupied for the winter. A perfect time for a near last ditch effort to revive his career and save his strained relations with his wife (Duvall) and son (Lloyd). But a sinister side to the lovely hotel slowly exposes his family (particularly himself and his son) to supernatural goings on that threatens to make them yet another chapter in the hotels creepy past.
Kubrick who revolutionized SciFi cinema with '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) turns to horror with this his adaptation (with Diane Johnson) of Stephen King's best-selling novel. Being a hardcore King fan I've had a beef in the past with how Kubrick had changed certain aspects of the source store. In particular much of the family frisson of the novel seems to be lost in the film. The new ending in the maze is a bit of a let-down next to the topiary from the novel but in the end I understand the change even though you'd have thought that the visual pioneer behind 2001 would have found an interesting workaround. However, petty gripes aside 'The Shining' is a wonderfully photographed and at times can be creepy and unsettling. Nicholson steals the show as he always does when his character destabilizes emotionally and heads toward perfectly maniacal and classic Jack territory. Duvall seems a bit out of place but if the old production stories hold true about how Kubrick terrorizes the performance out of her then maybe it's not entirely her own doing.
In short 'The Shining' is a very effective and at times stunningly attractive film that has a rock-solid air of menace that piles up by the conclusion. Fans of the book may develop issues but Nicholson and Kubrick fans will eat this one up.