One of the more memorable Stephen King adaptations, even if only for the line
"H-e-e-e-res Johnny!!!!!". This film stars Jack Nicholson as troubled author Jack Torrence (what is it with Stephen King stories featuring troubled authors now?),
who takes a winter caretaking job, at a remote hotel up in the Colorado mountains.
The hotel is closed for the season, as its going to be effectively snowed in till the spring. So all he has to do is make sure the heating works and carry out any minor repairs that need doing. Taking his wife Wendy (Shelly DuVall) and kid along with him, he hopes the location's peace, quiet and isolation will help him get over his writers block and allow him to finish his new novel.
As the weather draws in, cutting off the only road out of there, they settle down for the long winter. But then things in the hotel start to go awry. Their young son (who for some reason has strange telepathic abilities) starts seeing weird nightmarish visions. Not only this, but then Jack starts becoming extremely unbalanced, and the more time they spend in isolation, the more psychotic he becomes.
With the strange nightmarish visions, now visible to all, appearing all over the hotel. Wendy and the young son are forced to go on the run from Jack, who's finally tipped over the edge and gone on the rampage with an axe. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea building the hotel on top of an Indian burial ground after all (that's a thought, what is it with Stephen King novels and Indian burial grounds too)?
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, this is one of those horror films that relies heavily on mood and atmosphere, as opposed to blood and gore, to scare the audience. Whilst the film does create a genuinely scary atmosphere, the only negative thingt I will say, is that with a run time clocking in at around 2hrs 20mins, you might find this a bit overly long. Never the less, this one comes highly recommended to all fans of Jack Nicholson, Director Stanley Kubrick and author Stephen King.
In any case, you really need to see this to get many of those jokes in "The Simpsons", not to mention god knows how many other films and shows.
