Confusing And Disappointing

Rating: 2/10 (29 January 2012)

I haven't read the Stephen King novel, which was supposed to be much better. But it's easy to see why he would have objected to this movie production.
For one thing, the caretaker is supposed to be a normal human being who slowly becomes mad as he stays at the hotel. But Jack Nicholson's character seems sinister from the beginning. Instead of slowly going mad, he seems to have been that way from the beginning with nobody else noticing. Yet the movie implies that the ghosts of past residents are for real, as one was able to physically free Jack from the pantry. Did they drive him mad, as they presumably did to the previous caretaker? And what would be their motive? Nothing is hinted at.
Also, there are elements such as the child talking to his finger, a blood-filled elevator, and two ghostly twin girls who appear sporadically, none of which (according to other reviewers) appear in the novel. What purpose do they serve, since they don't advance the story in any way? The "shining" is presumably how the boy telegraphs his sense of danger to the man in Florida, summoning him, but why he has it is never covered.