Several really compelling scenes that don't add up to much, ultimately making this film a letdown

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 1999)

This is a perplexing film. Everything in this film seems to have been carefully orchestrated, including the publicity campaign which seems to be an elaborate decoy. Kubrick does a great job of creating foreboding, creepy scenes. But they all seem episodic. It just doesn't add up to much. And for a director who had a reputation for being obssessive and doing take after take, it sure seemed like what ended up on the screen was frequently the first take. At times I felt like I was watching a parody of a student film (perhaps an unintentional one).
An interesting failure, but a failure nonetheless.