Absolute Rubbish

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 1999)

I chose to visit the user comments to see if others felt the same way as I did about this film, and with a few exceptions, I guess I must have watched a different film. The majority of comments here indicate the film was worth watching. This is wrong. The film is pure crap.
For a film that is supposed to be so full of suspense and horror, I found it laughable. Obviously Kubrick has his disciples that will not allow themselves to say anything bad about his productions, and I presume this is the reason for the large number of good comments.
The following summary is bound to contain spoilers of some sort, so turn away now, if you want to reserve seeing pure crap for yourself at a later date...
At the start of the film, the audience gets introduced to the story of the last person who stayed all winter, went nuts and axed his family to death. "Not me" says Jack Nicholson. A couple of days later, Jack is going nuts and looking to axe his family to death. Gosh. That was a surprise. Not. However would we, the audience, have expected that, were it not for the rather poor directing effort at the start that gave away the whole plot?
I turn my attention now to the black guy who senses something is wrong from a thousand miles away due to his psychic ability. He then jumps in all manner of vehicles to get to the mansion, only to take an axe in the back one minute after getting in the door. Perhaps Kubrick's point was to make it as sudden and primal as possible, but it comes off as being a pretty lame way of getting the wife and kid access to a vehicle out of the place.
All in all, a piece of tripe that stinks. If you are considering watching this film, don't. Get another one. If you want to be scared, watch anything with Adam Sandler in it and fear how crap the entire film industry has become in recent years. If you want to be bored, watch the Shining. If you want to rent a turkey, watch the Shining. If you want to see a shockingly bad movie, watch the Shining.