One of the most effective horror films ever made

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2004)

** a few spoilers **
This movie almost requires repeated viewings to deliver its full impact, with layer upon layer of quiet dread and small, seemingly mundane moments of bizarreness building up to a devastatingly terrifying climax. The devil here is in the details, and those well-thought-out, lovingly executed details add up to make this one of the intellectually complex and chilling movies of all time.
When I first saw this movie in the theater at 16, I thought it was creepy but it didn't really "get" to me until the end. Ahh the simple innocence of youth! The more I've watched it as I got older, though, the more I've appreciated the creepy subtleties of this masterpiece. It's like a good old Islay scotch; at first you might not like it much, but age and experience reveals the true depth of its quality.
Most people who deride this film do so because of Shelly Duvall's effective unattractive performance as the hapless and befuddled Wendy, and the fact that it doesn't follow King's masterpiece novel verbatim. I prefer to think of it as Kubrick's near genius-level reinterpretation of the basic theme of a man's slow, inexorable descent into howling madness.
Kubrick's trademarks are all here: the clinical, nearly static camera work (until the final whirlwind sequence, when Jack's mind is completely unhinged), the slow, deliberate pacing, Nicholson's stares of what I call "slack-jawed malevolence" (which effectively imply the disorder into which his psyche is sinking).
The film's few gaffes include the blood flood from the elevator and the charming Scatman Crothers' desperate rush to the Overlook through a terrible blizzard to save the Torrances from the hotel's evil, only to get an axe in the chest almost immediately upon reaching his goal. The film's dark virtues far outweigh these relatively minor quibbles, though.
Nicholson has been criticized for an "over the top" turn as Jack Torrance. I can think of no other actor who could have pulled off his bravura performance of a man, already hounded by the twin demons of alcoholism and writers block, who slowly (and at first unwillingly) gives himself over to the The Overlook's insidious evil. When his sanity finally crumbles, Nicholson's magnificently wicked leers and bestial facial expressions (especially when he unfurls those demonic eyebrows) give fascinating face to a fiend at long last set free to destroy. We all know in our heart of hearts that that same rough beast lurks within us all; some people's control of it is simply weaker than others'. He does overact, but he pulls it off with such masterful confidence and magnetic panache that is impossible to look away.
Small touches of brilliance abound: the contradictory feeling of claustophobia in the huge and vacant hotel; the subtle recurring color red throughout the film's sets (implying the bloody ruin to come); the familiar nursery rhymes and pop culture phrases turned on their ears in chilling fashion ("Little pigs, little pigs, let me in"); the boundless horror on Wendy's face when the spectres of the hotel finally reveal themselves to her during the climax. There are too many throwaway gems to mention. The more I see this film (I've seen it probably nine times so far), the more effective it's sense of creeping dread and impending doom resonate.
This movie is, in my humble opinion, the "Citizen Kane" of horror films and deserves every accolade that it has received and more. It is a dark gem by the greatest American film director.