Vintage King

Rating: 10/10 (22 October 2001)

First off, I have to say the obvious. Jack Nicholson is an excellant actor and Stanley Kubrick is an incredible director, but this movie is actually a hodgepodge of confusing clues and vague images that doesn't make much sense. Kudos do have to go to the masterful and artful creation of the chilling images, the female twins with the huge foreheads for one, but at it's core, this movie is actually one very chilling ghost story set in a haunted hotel that turns into a giant sensory deprivation tank for the hapless couple and child trapped in it. The blood and gore plot is unnecessary except as a way to establish the increasing intensity of the script. The real star of this movie is the hotel itself with its vast rooms and endless halls; I for one would love to visit this hotel and look for ghosts if it trully existed. I hold these set as a standard for ever large looming edifice in almost every haunted house movie I have ever seen. The movie is weakened by a confusing back story and phony history that doesn't make sense. Too much was left out of the original King material to explain why the place is haunted and why it centers on Jack much less his son.