Sometimes, you know a review is going to have strong disagreements with it before you even begin to write it. I knew this would be the case for my review of The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, before I gave it my third, and likely final, watch. For I have believed for years that if this movie did not have Kubrick's name attached, it would be held in the same esteem as Needful Things or The Langoliers. And I'm not one of those 'this is a good movie but a bad adaptation' cowards: this is a poorly directed, poorly acted mess of a movie that, at this point, I think people are afraid to call out for being as bad as it is.
I'm sure I have lost quite a few people just with that opening paragraph, but I stand by it. This movie does not work: it sits in one emotional register the entire time, gets boring because of that, and rests on approximately two and a half good scenes to carry it through its two and a half hour runtime.
I realize Kubrick has his cult that is more than happy to explain every last unnecessary detail, but no amount of interpretive chicanery will convince me that everything Kubrick did here was on purpose. '[X] didn't exist when the movie was set, so that means Kubrick was making a commentary about [Y]' - no he didn't. He just made a mistake, like any other filmmaker, stop tripping over yourself trying to explain it. Just because he took a 5 second shot and stretched it out to 15 doesn't mean anything significant was included, it means Kubrick and editor Ray Lovejoy are bad at pacing their movie.
'Nicholson was amazing!' Sorry, but no he wasn't. He played a single note the entire film, and half the time he whiffed it. And I say that as someone who is generally a fan! He's not the worst performance in the film by any stretch, but he has so many other better performances that it almost feels obscene to call this one of his best. The only truly good performance in this movie (in a sizable part, I should note - some of the extras do a good job and I don't want to denigrate them) comes from Shelley Duvall, and I feel half bad giving that compliment since she was basically tortured by the director during the filming of it.
Giving the film what little credit it deserves, I will mention the two effective scenes: Danny (Danny Lloyd) coming across the two girl ghosts and seeing flashes of their murder, and then Wendy's (Duvall) panicked flailing in the restroom as Jack uses an axe to break through the door. I only give half credit to the scene where Jack goes into room 237, but only half because I am not sure if it is genuinely unsettling people, or if they (like the filmmaker) are just doing an 'old people are gross' sleight of hand.
Outside of that, nothing else is of note. Literally, those scenes are what permeated the cultural zeitgeist and its because they are literally the only good scenes the movie has to offer. 'But the typewriting scene!' - Sorry, that wasn't scary, it was just the first interesting thing to happen after 20 minutes of nothingness, plus the score gets annoyingly loud. Also, The Simpsons parody of it goes 10 times harder while also being funny. 'What about the picture at then end?' I'm sorry, Kubrick's lame feint towards ambiguousness is just further proof that he didn't know what he was doing with this movie. 'What about the murder of Dick?' How dare you, I am gay! Wait, you mean Dick Hallorann... Again, you only find it interesting because the lead up to it was so boring that the sudden movement and increase in scoring confused you into thinking something worthwhile happened on screen.
This movie is one long exercise in straining your patience, then giving you the most pedestrian of action, and expecting you to feel rewarded because something finally happened. And because people think Kubrick is a genius (I am not so convinced) they use cognitive dissonance to convince themselves there is meaning in the mess. There isn't. The movie is bad, and I would encourage you to spend your time watching better ones.
I don't recommend this movie to people, because I generally like the people I recommend movies to. However, I know other people speak highly of this movie and I guess I am happy that other people can enjoy it, even if I am greatly confused by it.
3 out of 10, and Shelley Duvall is carrying the bulk of that score.
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