A mixed bag, as far as I'm concerned

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2003)

The screenplay (co-written by Stanley Kubrick) largely ignores the details of King's original novel, omitting all but the basic premise, and stretching everything out for the best part of three hours. It seems as though the first act (the set up) lasts for only the first 6 or 8 minutes, the second act lasts for about two hours, and the third act lasts for about 30 minutes.
Gone are the subplots of finding the box in the basement containing records of all the former guests in the hotel, and their involvement in the mob. Instead, we have numerous, lengthy scenes of this trio wandering around the deserted hotel, and hallucinating, or being taunted by the ghosts of the hotel's past.
Gone also are Jack Torrance's sympathetic characteristics. Nicholson's character starts to go off the wall in his second scene. We never really see what he is like before he goes mad, so we can't really get involved with his already off-putting character. The mallet-chase climax from the book is replaced by a penultimate ax-wielding scene straight out of a slasher movie. The climax to the film, with Jack chasing his wife and son through a huge hedge-maze (ever so loosely derived from an earlier sequence in the book) is one of the film's few highlights, but the effective ending from the book, hinting at redemption, was replaced by a joke/ shock twist ending in this film.
Scatman Crothers' underused character is another highlight. He flew back to Colorado from Florida to try to save them and ended up being killed, yet his arrival was enough to distract Jack, and give Wendy enough of an opportunity to escape from the locked room and distracted Jack. Brothers character was a hero in that regard, yet also the sacrificial lamb.
Duvall, panic-ridden, telling Jack "There's someone else in this hotel with us!" was one of the creepiest moments in the film.
Odd art direction throughout, as the colour composition in a lot of scenes is almost comical (e.g. notice some of their clothing, and the bright red in the John). The music score also is effective in some scenes, and nearly comically overdone in others.