Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Cast
Jack Nicholson,
Shelley Duvall,
Danny Lloyd,
Scatman Crothers,
Barry Nelson,
Philip Stone
Genre
Horror,
Thriller
Jack accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he and his family must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for terror they soon face in this classic American horror film.
As one of the most well-known horror films around, this has no shortage of recognizable and imitated moments. Having also read the book, however, I found myself underwhelmed by the number of horror elements that were left out of the adaptation. I like the uncertainty the film presents, but I wish it captured more of the sense of growing horror from the perspective of a child that the book does so well.
Empire by Ian Nathan
Ostensibly a haunted house story, it manages to traverse a complex world of incipient madness, spectral murder and supernatural visions ...and also makes you jump.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
But there is no way, within the film, to be sure with any confidence exactly what happens, or precisely how, or really why. Kubrick delivers this uncertainty in a film where the actors themselves vibrate with unease.
Newsweek by Jack Kroll
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]
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
With remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, Stanley Kubrick rehabilitates Stephen King's trashy, terrifying novel. Not a horror film in any traditional sense, but a perversely comic, occasionally frightening melodrama of intrafamilial rage, THE SHINING retains the Oedipal structure of King's narrative while running rings around its pulpy sensibility.
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
A masterpiece.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The unhurried pace, extended dialogue scenes and those sudden, sinister inter-titles ("One Month Later", "4pm") contribute to the insidious unease. Nicholson's performance as the abusive father who is tipped over the edge is a thrillingly scabrous, black-comic turn, and the final shot of his face in daylight is a masterstroke...Deeply scary and strange.
Slant Magazine by Eric Henderson
It’s the experience more so than the actual content of The Shining that radiates cold, anti-humanly indifferent terror.
Total Film by Jamie Graham
The Shining buzzes madness and malevolence from every frame.
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
Who would have ever thought to pair up Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King? But weird as it sounds, this creepy thriller works.
LarsenOnFilm by Josh Larsen
The Shining is terrifying for what it doesn’t do.
Film Threat
For a supposed mainstream movie, Kubrick’s The Shining isn’t very audience friendly. Half the time you have to guess what the hell is going on, and if you're not familiar with Kubrick's narrative style you’ll be completely lost.
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
Meticulously detailed and never less than fascinating, The Shining may be the first movie that ever made its audience jump with a title that simply says "Tuesday."
Boston Globe
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]
Salon by Andrew O'Hehir
Stephen King reportedly loathed the liberties Kubrick and co-writer Diane Johnson took with his story, but King's ur-villain, the emasculated husband from hell, has never been more clearly presented on-screen.
Time by Richard Schickel
It is a daring thing the director has done, this bleaching out of all the cheap thrills, this dashing of all the hopes one brings to what is, after all, advertised as "a masterpiece of modern horror." Certainly he has asked much of Nicholson, who must sustain attention in a hugely unsympathetic role, and who responds with a brilliantly crazed performance.
Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
Kubrick is after a cool, sunlit vision of hell, born in the bosom of the nuclear family, but his imagery--with its compulsive symmetry and brightness--is too banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls suspense.
Variety
The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott
Kubrick certainly doesn't fail small. One could fast forget The Shining as an overreaching, multi-levelled botch were it not for Jack Nicholson. Nicholson, one of the few actors capable of getting the audience to love him no matter what he does, is an ideal vehicle for Kubrick. [14 Jun 1980, p.E1]
Loading recommendations...
Loading recommendations...