Lavish B Horror.

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2008)

The photography is exquisite, the score insinuating, the direction unblemished, and the acting sumptuous. It's so good that even Steven King's usual pulp horror script can't undo it.
From the opening scenes of an insignificant Volkswagon beetle snaking up the deserted road towards an old fortress-like hotel, with an ominous, electronic Dies Irae providing the accompaniment, we know we're in some strange territory. At the wheel of that tiny car is Jack Nicholson who is about to be hired as the winter caretaker of the Hotel Overlook. He brings his family, goggle-eyed but beautiful Shelley Duval, and his cute little son along to keep him company while he does his minimal manual chores and tries to write the great American novel. Things begin to go wrong. The echo of things past begins to make itself heard. Nicholson goes berserk, kills a good Samaritan (Scatman Crothers) with an ax and hunts down his wife and child. Duval manages to reach the snow cat, the only vehicle that can travel through the monstrous snowfall that has isolated them. Nicholson chases little Danny through an intricate maze of thirteen-foot-high hedges, howling and lugging his bloody ax. Danny outwits him, escapes with Duval, and Nicholson is finally left to freeze to death in the middle of the insoluble maze, a more cinematic ending than the novel's boiler room.
The hotel is a stage set in England and so is the exterior. But what a set it is. It comes across not at all faked but rather like stylized reality. Kubrik does a fine job. The natural tendency in a spooky horror movie would be to hurry the pace so as not to bore the audience of impatient teens. But Kubrik takes his time. The first hour does little more than introduce us to the characters, just enough information to pique us. The shock scenes are not sprinkled throughout the film but are built up to as logically as possible. Threats don't lurk in the shadows. Everything is visible. And the scenes are sometimes funny. The camera views Crother's TV through his bare feet as he lies in bed, under the portrait of a naked babe with an Afro the size of a medicine ball. His camera placement is original. Often the scenes are brightly lighted and the characters seem to be without makeup and the conversational pauses and hesitations stretched out to the horizon, a self-imposed directorial challenge.
And an acting challenge too. Jack Nicholson has been in better films but his performance here has never been topped. There are some long takes during which he speaks to Loyd, the ghostly bartender, while looking directly into the camera. He delivers a superlative slice of ham here and elsewhere, winking, wriggling his tongue at his wife, snorting, making gargoyle faces, acting stupefied. What a performance. Everybody else is good, too, if not quite at Nicholson's level, but of course he has by far the juiciest part.
The story is so full of holes that it's hardly worth bothering with them. Something strange happens to Nicholson, let's say. A beautiful naked woman approaches him in one of the hotel's rooms and smooches him while turning into a rotting corpse. Nicholson screams in horror and runs away. When Duval asks him what happened, he says, "Nothing." And if Loyd the bartender is a real ghost, and if the booze is real, and if Nicholson's character is really a recovering alcoholic who has decided to get off the wagon, then why does Jack order just one drink and then wander away to join a supernatural party? Why doesn't he say, "Loyd, give me something simple -- a bottle of bourbon and a straw." But suppose Nicholson is hallucinating the ghosts? Well, that can't be, either. One of them unlocks the door to the food storage room and lets Nicholson out. And Shelley Duval and little Danny see them too.
This doesn't really torpedo the movie. It has too many superlative features to be destroyed. The holes are irritants but not lethal. A good deal of talent was lavished on this lowbrow script. See it if you can.