Horror movies, in particular slasher movies, are known for their efficiency.  Introduce the soon-to-be-victims with some threadbare character traits, each having some a combination of obliviousness, stupidity, narcissism and hornyness, provide a remote setting where the victims can be seen with their negative character traits on display, then introduce a weapon-wielding maniac to mete out justice on the victims for being generally bad people.  These movies put us in the position of rooting for the killer, because only he (sometimes she) can save us from spending one more minute with the victims, who are too annoying and oversexed for their own good.

On paper, making a movie out of Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining probably sounded like an excellent idea.  Both the original novel and the sequel were best-sellers.  The movie (released in 1980) remains one of the most iconic adaptations of his books, alongside Carrie, The Dead Zone, Salem’s Lot, Cujo, Christine.  King has long been on record as hating Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of his novel, to the point where he approved a mini-series adaptation that was broadcast in 1997.  While much more faithful to the novel, most people still tend to point to Kubrick’s version as the definitive version.

I believe that it’s easy to explain why a great movie is great.  Explaining why a bad movie is bad or doesn’t work requires much more effort.  

“The rich really are different.”