Is there such a thing as a Perfect Film?

Rating: 10/10 (3 May 2020)

As someone who tries to really be as fair as possible with review scores as possible I haven't, until now, given any film a 10/10 score.
I'm try not to say that there is ever such a thing as a perfect work of anything, as there is always some kind of improvement that can be made. Indeed, The Shining is not a perfect film. It has its fair share of errors that mostly have to do with the sets and their design, yet the reactions to them are different here than they might be in other films.
What sets Kubrick's The Shining ahead of so many other films is how thematically rich it is and its use of utilizing the visual medium to tell this story so well.
One of the issues that comes about when sound is added to film is that the reliance on telling a visual story and conveying themes in a visual way are usually phased out by using the characters to explain everything through expository dialogue. While by no means is sound in film a bad thing, there are a lot of films that unfortunately fall into this trap. The thing about Kubrick's films (save for Eyes Wide Shut) is that there really isn't that much reliance on dialogue as a way of progressing the story or as a means of explanation. Dialogue in The Shining helps to service the atmosphere of the film's setting and characters and, especially when it comes to the Torrance family, they talk as if they are real people living a mundane existence in an isolated hotel in the mountains during a long winter. It helps make the film much more believable and helps make it feel scary. It's certainly scarier than it would be if you had someone popping in and explaining what's going on every time something strange and inexplicable happens. Kubrick is good at leaving any possible explanations up to the viewer to decide which is something difficult to do.
This film is also thematically rich. There is always something to explore in it and different things to talk about- different angles to analyze it at. I think that's why any of the continuity errors or errors in general that do occur are forgiven because instead of being seen as errors, they are interpreted as being deliberate decisions and included as part of the analysis. It works with this film because there isn't supplemental lore this film depends on as franchise films do, and most analysis is taken from only what is presented in the film, leading to a litany of fascinating discussions about it.
It's difficult to justify a 10/10 rating, as many would be inclined to say that the film is overrated because so many others believe it is so great. But you would be hard-pressed to find another film that executes horror in this way so well and so uniquely. Of course there are debates over whether or not this is a good adaptation of the original novel, but I think that if you go in expecting this to be like the book, you kind of miss the point of where this film takes the story. It's more of an interpretation of the novel rather than a straight adaptation and unlike in the novel where all the supernatural stuff is literally happening, here it's more of a question- a question to which there is seemingly no correct answer. This is a great piece of horror and a great piece of cinema and that cannot be debated, I don't think.