Absolutely Worthless

Rating: 1/10 (22 July 2000)

Do not waste your time on this movie. It is one of the best examples of a botched translation from print to screen ever. It has been inexcusably "Kubrickized" to make it fit in more easily with the rest of Stanley Kubrick's body of work.
Kubrick takes the basic idea from the book-- and I do mean the most absolutely basic outline of the story-- and changes it into something that is not even remotely scary. In the book, the Hotel itself is the fourth main character, slowly driving Jack Torrance insane. In this utter waste of film, Jack was crazy when they got there, and the isolation from the outside world is what takes him over the edge. In this bastardized version, there is no point in having Danny possessed of psychic powers, nor of making the Hotel itself haunted. Those two points, which should be the two most important facts of the story, instead take a backseat to a very predictable, very generic story of an already unstable man finally snapping.
Do yourself a favor, and instead of this absolute SIN of a film, watch the made-for-tv mini-series starring Steven Weber. It is much more faithful to the book, and therefore a much better and well worked story.