Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (25 March 2003)

I don't get it why so many people think that's a horror masterpiece.It didn't scare me at all with only one or two exception for the whole movie. The biggest problem of the movie is that the plot was simply awful.I've read Stephen King's book(and liked it so much more than that movie BTW)and there a lot of unnecessary changes from it, but even putting that aside,there's so much plot holes it's just ridiculous.Kubrick just removed what he thought was unnecessary from the book,but didn't replace it with anything else so often the movie didn't make sense at all.

*SPOILERS*

It was never explained why Jack started to go insane,why he started seeing ghosts and such.He just went from an normal(just a little weird) man to a complete psycho in one or two days.There was nothing about Jack's problems with alcohol and his previous disappointments as a writer,which are two essential elements of the book's plot.There was no explanations why Jack was seeing those ghosts.And last of all,Haloran came from thousands of miles away knowing full well something very bad was happening,but he entered calmly trough the front door and asked "Is anyone here".Most of the best moments from the book was omitted without being replaced with something that makes sense.
*END SPOILERS*
The acting wasn't very good either,Nicholson was great but the others were quite bad.The camerawork was great for most parts. And it was moving painfully slow,with nothing happening for big periods of the movie.The best feature of the movie was the scary music and sound effects,but they couldn't save it from being a big disappointment for me.