Critics keep saying "you can't judge it in terms of the first film," but about 90% of the good stuff in the sequel was directly taken from the original.
Which is weird, because King himself doesn't care for the Kubrick treatment, yet here we are, with a straight-down-the-pipe revisiting of that unfavored(?) classic.
Also, every time the hat appeared on-screen, she was immediately bested (except by the little girl at the beginning and that one kid later). At no time did the protagonists seem to be in any actual danger, nor did it seem as though the hat could credibly gain enough of an upper hand to defeat the protagonists.
While I'm at it, the "Old Lady in the Tub" appeared like 700 times in this film. She was shocking in the original, but only because we'd been deceived (like Jack Torrance) by her young, beautiful apparition. To show her repeatedly (and repeatedly, and repeatedly) in her revealed form is to shear away horror that she might otherwise have carried.
And, if they were going to cannibalize imagery from the far superior film, why did they leave out the oral sex bear?
We made the mistake of watching the director's cut, which runs about 4,000 hours. When it was over, we all kind of looked at each other as if to say "what a bland, steaming pile that was."
But YMMV.
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