What to say....

Rating: 5/10 (31 March 2008)

Don't get me wrong, the originality of the story is great, mainly because it was done before all of those abandoned but "haunted" hotels, motels, houses, whatever kind of building scenario. But I thought the movie moved at a time dragging pace, the whole shot of Danny Torrence rolling around on his tricycle left me wondering..."What was the director thinking?" A lot of the things that happened in the movie made no sense to me really. The book I thought was much more clear and less abstract on the transformation of Jack Torrence. I also thought the betrayal of Jack Torrence's character was wrong. We essentially knew nothing about him or his family, other than Danny was having bad dreams, then it starts with the Torrence's taking over of the hotel for the winter and Jack has lost his mind.
I loved how it was done in the book, you got a good feel for who Jack was and where he had come from and you felt good about him. When they go to the hotel the symptoms Jack experienced where eye widening. He was chewing on the aspirin, losing his temper and getting major headaches, all conclusive to when he was drinking, but he wasn't. I thought the movie missed a little on that. The movie by itself however seemed to want to breath a life of it's own rather than paying homage to the novel it came from. I guess when it came down to it, I really had no care for the wife and child. Danny walking around saying redrum was really one of the most annoying things I have ever had to watch. But because the film was so slow to progress that when the climax finally showed up it failed to make up for lost time and attention.
All in all, an O.K. movie, but I really don't see what the hype was all about in the this other than the famous "Here's JOHNNY!" line. Watch it if you wish, obviously it has a 8.5 on IMDb for a reason...