The New York Times
(Kubrick) manages to make his movie thoroughly unnerving by keeping the horror so close to home.
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The Shining
Stanley Kubrick's masterful horror adaptation of Stephen King's novel. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has writer's block. So he and his family move into an isolated resort hotel, high in the Colorado mountains, as the sole occupants and caretakers for the long winter. But this awakens more than just artistic demons as a madness takes over Jack, one the whole family will come to experience.
"Every frame of the film brims with Kubrick's genius for implying psychological purpose in setting: the hotel's tight, sinister labyrinth of corridors; its cold, sterile bathrooms; the lavish, illusionary ballroom. This was horror of the mind transposed to place (or, indeed, vice versa). The clarity of the photography and the weird perspectives constantly alluding to Torrance's twisted state of mind. The supernatural elements are more elusive than the depiction of his madness. The 'shining' itself - the title comes from the line "We all shine on" in the John Lennon song Instant Karma - is the uncanny ability to see dark visions of the truth (young Danny manifests the power through an imaginary alter-ego Tony). A power separate from, yet entwined, with the evil that dwells in the building." (Empire Magazine)
Less1980Rating: R16, Violence, offensive language & horror142 minsUK, USA
HorrorThriller
- Director:
- Stanley Kubrick ('Spartacus', 'Lolita', 'Dr Strangelove', '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'A Clockwork Orange')
- Writer:
- Stanley KubrickDiane Johnson
- Cast:
- Jack NicholsonShelley DuvallDanny LloydScatman Crothers
The Shining | Reviews
84%98 reviewsRotten Tomatoes® Score
All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Roger Ebert
The movie is not about ghosts but about madness and the energies it sets loose in an isolated situation primed to magnify them.
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Variety
Kubrick has teamed with jumpy Jack Nicholson to destroy all that was so terrifying about Stephen King's bestseller.
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Salon
The classic Stanley Kubrick film isn't just scary - it is also, in its own odd way, defined by a hopeful perspective on life and death.
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Empire Magazine
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.
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Slant Magazine
It's the experience more so than the actual content of The Shining that radiates cold, anti-humanly indifferent terror.
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Time Magazine
Kubrick has made a movie that will have to be reckoned with on the highest level.
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Film Threat
Kubrick doesn't dumb it down or anything, but he's not actively trying to appeal only to film connoisseurs either. If any of his movies could be called mainstream, it's this one.
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The Shining | Release Details
The Shining is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV and Neon and Academy On Demand and AroVision.