It's a horror of a film!

Rating: 1/10 (17 September 2004)

Lousy adaptation of Stephen King's great novel. It's about a family watching over a huge hotel (the Overlook) which is located in the mountains in Colorado during the winter. They're basically isolated out there--miles and miles away from anyone. Also seems the hotel is haunted and starts to take possession of the father (Jack Nicholson). Then the snowstorms hit--they're completely snowed in and the mother (Shelley Duvall) and little son (Danny Lloyd) are at the mercy of the axe-wielding father...
The novel was VERY scary and well-done--Kubrick single-handedly trashes the entire book. Kubrick WAS a great director but he just didn't know how to do a straight-forward horror film. He acts like this is an important film--he takes it WAY too seriously. He makes very ill-conceived changes from the book (one character is brutally killed, but he was alive and well at the end of the book, and where are the hedge animals?) and has Nicholson's character act so weird from the get go that we don't really notice any change when he goes crazy. Nicholson IS good however but Duvall is annoying and Lloyd was basically not accomplished enough to pull off his role (but he WAS a young kid). Scatman Crothers is good but he's not in the film enough to really help. Also the film isn't scary ONCE. Kubrick shows all his purported "shocking" moments with loud, annoying music--problem is nothing he shows us is scary. Also the ending is REALLY stupid and throws in a reincarnation angle that comes out of NOWHERE (and isn't in the book).
My main issues with this is that it isn't scary, is WAY too long and way too serious. Even King himself hated this. But there are some people who think everything Kubrick did was fantastic and even defend this. I hated it in 1980...I still hate it now. I give it a 1.