A piece of genius horror with 1,000,000 times more terror than a typical slasher

Rating: 9/10 (22 December 2011)

This film is such a breath of fresh air compared to the usual teen slasher crap where one by one gets taken out in obvious circumstances. Jack Nicholson was the ideal person for this role and watching him slip slowly but surely into total and utter madness was breathtakingly terrifying simply because of his acting, and the build up from little signs that something isn't right to a rampage with an axe !
although i found her unbearably annoying through most of the film i do feel after watching the documentary footage "making the shining" by Vivian Kubrick that Shelley Duvall was treated unfairly by the director and that she deserved to be cut a bit of slack during filming.
Watching a normal man driven totally insane by sheer isolation is terrifying simply because it could happen to just about anyone and is much more believable than most horror films and the fact that there was only one on-screen death was refreshing because in pretty much every horror movie it is just relentless slaughter from beginning to end. the. Everything I have mentioned is what makes this a true psychologically chilling and controlling movie.