So Jack, Wendy, and Danny are all in the car. Jack Torrance has this perpetual evil scowl on his face for some reason, Danny is an emotionless husk, and Wendy seems completely oblivious to everything. That definitely makes sense. Jack takes the job where he stays in this remote, isolated hotel for five months during the winter, despite all of the warnings about how isolated and lonely it gets. Doesn't even consider the rest of his family. Sounds about right.
As the family explores the hotel, they meet the head chef, who has a private conversation with Danny about people who have a "shine" to them, which means they can see things other people can't. That would explain why Danny keeps on having disturbing visions, but it wouldn't really explain Tony so ehhhh I'm not so sure about that one. At least there is theoretically an explanation as to why Danny is so distant all the time, but they really ought to have made a better case for why Danny acts the way he does, because he doesn't seem like he should be that distant, based on the way he talks and behaves.
As Jack reverts more and more to his abusive ways, we see that Wendy really does know something's up, as she starts to show concern about things. 45 minutes into the movie. Wendy seems either stupid or badly written for the first 45 minutes of the movie, and then she actually starts to act in a reasonable manner.
At this point, weird things start to happen. Weird things that come completely out of nowhere and are never explained. For example:
- Jack sees miniature versions of Wendy and Danny in the scale model of the hedge maze while Wendy and Danny are in the real hedge maze. Not explained.
- Danny sees red water (blood?) flooding the hall with the elevator.
- Jack makes out with a naked woman in the bathroom of room 237. Then suddenly she is an old woman with skin problems. Not explained.
After a while, Jack is told by the ghost of the hotel's caretaker that he actually is the caretaker of the hotel, and he is the one who murdered his family a long time ago. So OK I'll guess I'll just take that. He becomes increasingly evil and tries to murder his family, but Wendy and Danny manage to escape from him. As Wendy is escaping:
- She sees the same flooding that Danny saw, but she doesn't shine or anything, so it must be real? She is later seen on her merry way escaping from the hotel, though, so I guess there weren't any actual implications of that happening.
- She sees the bartender guy and some person in an animal suit. Not explained.
Eventually, Wendy escapes from the hotel with Danny, and Jack dies out in the cold. He later becomes one of the people in the hotel's pictures, which is zoomed in on as calming jazz music plays, completely conflicting with the tone right before that happens.
Let's not forget about those musical cues! Movie soundtracks are supposed to enhance the tone of each scene without sticking out, but I found myself constantly wondering why the music was the way it was. Almost every time the music implied rising tension or had a sudden scare chord, there was nothing special happening. Except for THE DAY OF THE WEEK CHANGING
WEDNESDAY
All in all, this movie is a collection of mildly stressful scenes that don't come together to make a coherent story. If the story was coherent, maybe I could try and guess what was coming next, and maybe even feel fear for what was going to happen to the characters. But I didn't. Nothing happened. How is a movie supposed to be scary when I'm just wondering what's going on the whole time?
I give this movie a 1.75 out of 5 stars. It actually did have tension at a lot of points, so it gets three quarters of a star for that.
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