Tracks to nowhere.

Rating: 5/10 (17 April 2010)

Laying down more tracking shots than the Union Pacific did rail during its cross continental building Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is an empty horror flic rich in production design and due to his methodical style void most of the way of suspense. For nearly two and a half hours Kubrick drags his camera around the empty surroundings of a deserted off season hotel and its grounds inexorably building up suspense but failing to follow through as he lets scenes drag on endlessly with superfluous dialog and hollow disjointed action.
Writer Jack Torrance along with his wife and child take on the duty of caring for a grand Colorado hotel that eventually becomes closed off from the outside world. The son Danny has special powers that allow him to see the past as well as well as channel thoughts of others. As the days pass Jack slowly becomes unhinged and Danny's abilities become more vivid and gruesome. Meanwhile wife Wendy's hand wringing increases but it's clear that only a bloodbath will be able to satiate a patient audience slowed down by Stanley's innocuous attention to detail which impedes the pacing.
Kubrick's visual style was at good as it got in the last half of the century and in The Shining we have some bravura compositions backed by a muscular score and soundtrack that ratchets up the suspense but fails to sustain it as Kubrick plods along with superfluous tracking shots and slow zooms that add nothing but time to the story and loosen tautness.
Nicholson is a superb chilling presence but Shelly Duvall as his suffering and clueless wife is all wrong and the chemistry between the two is non-existent from the outset. It is left up to Nicholson's sick sense of humor to give some spring to the (you guessed it) drawn out finale that salvages moments from this polished bore.
The Shining is a shining example of a master filmmaker out of his genre depth, slumming with his pedigree and being incapable of delivering the goods done so well and for a lot less by fellow directors who would not be mentioned in the same breath as this giant. The thing is he could have learned a lot from them.