Campy horror send-up

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2006)

I saw this during it's initial theatrical release and I had not read the book to compare it by so I viewed this for what it was a film. Is this an intellectual thriller or a campy send-up of horror movies and the horror genre? Maybe a little of both. An unemployed recovering alcoholic writer has lost his ability to write and is in a marriage with a young son when he accepts the position of a caretaker of a Colorado summer resort. It's big Lodge dating from the 1920's and no roads leading to it are plowed in the winter months for six months of the year. He figures it will be an ideal chance to work on his masterpiece novel and be close with his wife and son at the same time. His son has an ability to tune in to the supernatural. Not a lot of reason for supernatural to be getting all creepy out in the remote Colorado mountains unless of course the old lodge is built on an Indian burial ground and a former caretaker once went mad there and murdered his family. Upon closer inspection it appears that there have been quite a few murders over the years there. Stephen King wrote his novel The Shining while staying at an old Colorado hotel but the hotel used for the films exterior shots is the Timberline in Oregon. The opening scenes were shot in Montana. Interior scenes of the hotel are inspired from various hotels dating back to the 1920's and were constructed on a sound stage. Jack Nicholson stars as the hotel's new caretaker in a character thats kind of a cross between his roles in Five Easy Pieces from 10 years earlier and Little Shop of Horrors from 20 years earlier. Shelly Duvall is the submissive hysterical wife and youngster Danny Lloyd is the son in his first and second to last film role. Scatman Crothers and Barry Nelson are among the cast. The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Stanley Kubrick directs. John Alcott who was Kubrick's cinematographer on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lydon is the film's cinematographer. Nicely stylized film but the meandering story and it's vague subplots are so peppered with comedy that it never really can concentrate on being a horror film. It's entertaining but the relentless victimization of women and children by the the film's lead character while delivering one-liners is kind of disturbing. I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.