Artsy horror...nothing more.

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2003)

Don't be fooled that just because this a Stanley Kubrick movie and it's on the top 250 films here that it's good. Don't get me wrong, the movie is certainly top-notch horror, but only in the terms that it's not a teenage slasher, the body count is not sky high, it has people who can actually act, and the mood is just right. For a horror film, that's VERY rare. BUT...you will most likely fall asleep waiting for the movie to get to a scare. Kubrick lets this movie drag on forever...it's exhausting. If you've read the book, you know it's about a family that moves into the Overlook Hotel where the dad pulls a crazy and goes postal with an axe (actually, a mallet in the book). Sound interesting? It is. If you can wait the 2 hours to get to that part. The only good thing about this is the end, which is terrifying and definitely a horror classic, and the several good scares Kubrick inserts...between all the boring stuff. This "family" just walks around the hotel alone, not even talking to one another except about meals, etc. while Nicholson (a great performance, by the way) loses it for no apparent reason...a little explanation would have helped. Shelly Duvall is a good actress...her character is such a wuss you could hit her with a feather and she would die. Overall this movie has serious flaws like slow pacing...um, VERY slow...and the biggest flaw of all is in the characters. I never even FEEL the connection between these people. You never believe they are a family. I mean, the little boy Danny is being chased by his own FATHER with an axe...that's something absolutely terrible...but in this movie you never even see the two as father and son...you see them as killer and prey. Hello?! They are blood relatives, shouldn't we feel that? This is NOT a family. This movie is just artsy, dressed up horror, boil it all down and you got a boring movie with a few good scares. If you want to see this, make sure you see it alone. That way you won't make your friends sit for over 2 hours watching Danny ride around on a bike, Wendy make meals, and Jack type. YAAAWWWWNNNN!