Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (31 July 2015)

Once again, I decided to check out a highly regarded "cinematic masterpiece" and was left kinda disappointed. Scariest movie of all time? No, not really. It wasn't even particularly scary.
Admittedly, a lot of it was well done. The little girls were the best part. They were great. The steadicam shots through the hallways were pretty cool. There was a good sense of "What horrors could be lurking around the corner?" as the camera follows the kid through the halls.
But aside from those things, much of the movie didn't work so well. Jack Nicholson was more hilarious than menacing. Was that intentional? His witty dialogue provided many laughs, but watching him slowly stumbling around holding an axe was hardly what I'd call horror.
The story was completely nonsensical. What was any of that? There's no explanation for almost everything that happens in the movie! Here's where I'll probably get derided by the movie's fans for not "getting it," but I'm convinced this is really a case where the movie-makers themselves had no clue what it all meant. They just threw all this random imagery at us just to confuse us and convince us that it's actually brilliant (because if we can't comprehend any of it, it must be brilliant, right?) but really it just makes zero sense.
I don't get why this is so highly rated.