another overrated Kubrick film

Rating: 5/10 (8 April 2001)

I don't understand why so many people like this movie. The minimal plot is so lame, they seemed desperate to fill in the holes with meaningless scenery and scenes. Scatman Crothers, who played the chef Dick Hallorann, seemed to think he was in a completely different movie than the rest. Talk about not having chemistry. This was the extreme. The intensity and over-dramatized fluctuations in his lines sounded like he thought he was giving an infomercial sales pitch. He stood out like a sore thumb and just his presence is very questionable, as if they only added him later to fill some sort of socio-political gap, if you know what I mean.
The entire story was very weak. They tried to explain Jack's random insanity by suggesting the hotel was haunted with the spirits of past guests whom I assume were murdered or died there. And he was supposed to be falling in the footsteps of a previous caretaker who went on a murderous rampage, killing his entire family for no apparent reason. Say what?
It didn't work. There were too many different ghost and horror elements thrown in for it to many any sense. That's all it was: just a bunch of elements "thrown in", nothing more. As hard as they desperately tried to scare me, I just became more bored. In some of the "scary" scenes, I found myself chuckling at the absurdity of it all. It has to at least be a little believable. It falls way short.
There are much better films out there to try to pass off as great horror films. But like most of Kubrick's work, the legend of this film exceeds the quality by miles. Another example of the most overrated director in Hollywood history.