A film made good by Lack Nicholson

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2009)

Although Stanley Kubrik is a brilliant director, he took Stephen King's masterpiece and reduced it to a horror film with good cinematography and one good performance. In the novel the main character is a good man with many personal demons, but The Overlook Hotel is the entity which is evil and influences the main character. In the movie Stanley Kubrik makes it look like Nicholson's character is evil from the very beginning and that the hotel has hardly anything to do with his madness. Another problem with the film is that the role of the wife is horribly miscast. In the book she is desperate to protect her son and terrified by the transformation in her husband. In the film she comes across as some idiot wielding a knife, and is neither capable enough of protecting herself or her son. The ending of the movie is completely wrong, and conveys none of the sacrifice he finally commits at the end of the novel. Substituting the main character blowing up the Overlook and himself with Nicholson freezing to death in the maze was hardly right, and left me completely unsatisfied.