X
- 1980
- R
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- 2 h 26 m
- 1980
- R
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- 2 h 26 m
Summary A married couple with a small son are employed to look after a resort hotel high in the Colorado mountains. As a result, they are the sole occupants during the long winter. The hotel manager warns them not to accept the job because of a tragedy that occurred during the winter of 1970. (Warner Bros.)
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick
Written By: Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
- 1980
- R
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- 2 h 26 m
- 1980
- R
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- 2 h 26 m
The Shining
68
8.6
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Summary A married couple with a small son are employed to look after a resort hotel high in the Colorado mountains. As a result, they are the sole occupants during the long winter. The hotel manager warns them not to accept the job because of a tragedy that occurred during the winter of 1970. (Warner Bros.)
Directed By: Stanley Kubrick
Written By: Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 26 Critic Reviews
68
62% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
31% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
8% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 26 Critic Reviews
68
62% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
31% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
8% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Stanley Kubrick hungers for the ultimate. In The Shining, he has gone after the ultimate horror movie, something that will make "The Exorcist" look like "Abbott and Costello Meet Beelzebub." The result is the first epic horror film, a movie that is to other horror movies what his "2001: A Space Odyssey" was to other space movies. [26 May 1980, p.96]
It’s the experience more so than the actual content of The Shining that radiates cold, anti-humanly indifferent terror.
User Score
Universal Acclaim Based on 1,123 User Ratings
8.6
92% Positive
1030 Ratings
1030 Ratings
6% Mixed
65 Ratings
65 Ratings
2% Negative
28 Ratings
28 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim Based on 1,123 User Ratings
8.6
92% Positive
1030 Ratings
1030 Ratings
6% Mixed
65 Ratings
65 Ratings
2% Negative
28 Ratings
28 Ratings
May 5, 2025
I finally sat down for "the shining" this past weekend with south park's parody of it being the only pre-conceived notions that I had. This movie lives up to its name, being a little comical at times to today's horror standards, yet still creating a timeless creepy atmosphere the whole time. The soundtrack stood out to me as it manipulated my heart beat in different scenes. Even at the subtle glance from the son, a new sound would appear and draw up a new emotion from the viewer. The Maze was enough to drive anyone insane, and I found the concept of the film to be novel (of course) despite it being older. I am quite happy I finally saw this and know why everyone has hyped it up for so long.
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Who would have ever thought to pair up Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King? But weird as it sounds, this creepy thriller works.
When you sit down to The Shining, you sit down with normal expectations of being diverted, perhaps even being gripped, but not being undermined. But the film undermines you in powerful, inchoate ways. It's a horror story even for people who don't like horror stories - maybe especially for them. [14 Jun 1980, p.1]
By Bruce McCabe
Though taken from a pulp best-seller, by Stephen King, the movie isn't the scary fun one might hope for from a virtuoso technician like Kubrick. It has a promising opening sequence, and there is some spectacular use of the Steadicam, but Kubrick isn't interested in the people on the screen as individuals. They are his archetypes, and he's using them to make a metaphysical statement about the timelessness of evil. He's telling us that man is a murderer through eternity. Kubrick's involvement in technology distances us from his meaning, though, and while we're watching the film it just doesn't seem to make sense.
The opening scene of The Shining is along a narrow mountain road while the “Dies Irae” plays ominously on the soundtrack. The camera veers out away from the car toward the horizon as if to bear down on something significant… and then comes back to the car. The movement is a sort of portent for the direction of the movie, which takes two and a half hours to go nowhere.
Stanley Kubrick's production of The Shining, a ponderous, lackluster distillation of Stephen King's best-selling novel, looms as the Big Letdown of the new film season. I can't recall a more elaborately ineffective scare movie. You might say that The Shining, opening today at area theaters, has no peers: Few directors achieve the treacherous luxury of spending five years (and $12 million-$15 million) on such a peerlessly wrongheaded finished product.
Oct 11, 2024
Stanley Kubrick works a psychopathic father, a child with ESP, an old murder and a haunted mansion into one dense narrative. Or maybe he doesn’t, since the facts behind many of The Shining’s wildest concepts are left to the viewer to validate. There’s no doubting the first point, in any case, as recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) quickly spirals out of control when he’s snowed in by a major winter storm. Fresh off a short teaching stint, Torrance has accepted a position as seasonal caretaker for a vast, remote Colorado resort as a sort of off-key working vacation. With a wife and son along for the adventure, he intends to make progress on a novel, but soon succumbs to a monstrous case of the stir crazies and begins taking bad advice from ghosts. It can be analyzed to mean any number of things - contemporary reviewers saw it as an allegory for sexism, the extermination of Native Americans, discarded masculinity or the decline of western civilization - and, while you can find anything you like between those lines, I most appreciate it on a surface level. Even in that more limited light, The Shining might just be the best horror movie ever made. It’s a simple, familiar formula for the genre: a flawed man, driven over the edge by circumstance, is confined in an unfamiliar space with helpless victims. As he loses touch with his senses, their panic levels spike. Kubrick mines that for all it’s worth, stressing the totality of the family’s isolation and the strangeness of their surroundings, and his cast does the rest. Nicholson is spectacular and unnerving as the increasingly broken, duplicitous father who loses his already-tenuous grip on sanity. Shelly Duvall bares stark emotion as a fragile young mother who can’t accept her husband’s latest psychotic break. Seven-year-old Danny Lloyd speaks in tongues and disassociates from reality, an awful, silent victim of both his father’s mania and the supernatural phenomena that have affected his childhood. And the venue, a towering, swollen maze of empty halls and lavish décor, would be a character unto itself, even without its many resident spirits. This is all told in a style and fashion befitting the famous director, not to mention his equally famous dedication to getting everything just right. Many of Kubrick’s shots are equal parts beautiful and hideous, expert displays of photographic mastery paired with a deeply distressing subject matter. Jack’s famous axe-swinging entry through a locked door, for example, wildly pans and veers to follow each cut while never losing its magnificent sense of composition. At once, we’re dazzled, dizzied and disturbed. The soundtrack is even more essential. Each scene leans heavily on its audio cues, which build and peak with such subtlety, I’d often find hairs standing on my neck *before* a scare. A striking rumination on... something, that’s portrayed with rich meaning and stirring potency, The Shining is truly one for the history books. Color me hypnotized.
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Feb 13, 2022
I do not understand why this film is given such a high rating. Before I watched The Shining, I watched Doctor Sleep. It's much scarier and has a much more suspenseful effect.
The pluses of "The Shining" is the acting of Jack Nicholson, in some scenes he is just a psychopath) He should play Pennywise. The camerawork, considering what year the movie was shot, it looks gorgeous. All those sets and framing are amazing.
The minuses of "The Shining" is Shelley Duvall's acting, every time she cried/shouted I just laughed, what the **** Why does she look so ridiculous in front of "Nicholson". Thriller/horror genre, that's not what this movie is about. It's more of a thrash comedy. PS: Jason Voorhees movies made in the same years are much scarier.
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Aug 14, 2015
A classic, memorable and humanitarian Stanley Kubrick-creation -- it might not have the universal acclaim from my behalf, but it stands out as a clever, somewhat scary horror flick. It's by all means beautifully directed, clever and of course very memorable with its scary and relatable moments. The Shining isn't just another horror installment, it's much more than that. It got much to tell about the nature of the human self, and its humanitarian aspect like insanity, supernatural phenomenons and obsession. It's also extremely well written and visualized. But it's boring, and less entertaining throughout the whole movie, most of the time. The acting is another aspect, and Shelley Duvall is such a horrible actor. But Jack Nicholson is flawless. So it's an overall boring and slow movie, but that got some scary moments. But it never felt like all the build-ups really payed off, and the climax never comes. But the ending was kinda plot-twisty so it was great! But it's still a boring and slow horror-flick. 6.8/10
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Aug 11, 2021
this movie is boring as watching paint dry, the pacing **** and some conversations last upwards of 10 minutes. By the time things get interesting (the final act) its past the point of being enjoyable because you've spent the whole movie yawning
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Jul 8, 2021
Really not a fan of this one. The pacing is so slow, the plot is underwhelming and somehow despite the slow pace seems to be rushed. There is little to no frightening scenes for a movie in this genre.
The acting was great by everyone named Jack and poor by most of the others.
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Awards
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA
• 2 Wins & 8 Nominations
Online Film & Television Association
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
Razzie Awards
• 2 Nominations
