More tragedy than thriller

Rating: 4/10 (24 June 2001)

If you haven't seen it, don't bother. I have no trouble understanding why Stephen King hated this movie so much he had it remade (though I haven't seen his version, so I don't know if he actually did a better job than Kubrick).
Jack Nicholson does a fairly good job as Jack Torrance; although he seems incapable of acting normal when he's supposed to (mostly in the beginning), his character goes mad fairly early, and mad is Jack Nicholson's middle name. The best scenes are definitely those that show Torrance's gradual descent into madness; they almost (but not quite) manage to save the movie.
The rest of the cast varies from fair (Philip Stone as Delbert Grady) to passable (Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance) to indifferent (the hotel staff, the firemen) to bad (Scatman Crothers as the stereotypical genial black cook with the most annoying laugh you've ever heard) to abysmal (Shelley Duval as Wendy Torrance): Lloyd is so-so, with on one hand his laughable conversations with his imaginary friend Tony, and on the other the excellent "Redrum" scene, which is slightly reminiscent of The Exorcist, while Duval - well, let's just say you'll spend most of the movie hoping she gets brutally murdered at the end.
The plot is simple, predictable and uninspired, and is not without its fair share of holes, which is surprising (and disappointing) for a Kubrick movie. There is also a distressing number of continuity errors, though some of them can be explained if one assumes that more time passes between scenes than it seems - but either way, they're annoying.
One of the movie's few saving graces is the photography - ranging from good to excellent - which manages to convey the strangeness and isolation of the Overlook Hotel very well, and help set the mood in those scenes that actually have mood (which excludes most of the scenes featuring Duval, Lloyd or Crothers).