The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining arrived in 1980 as something of a genre event: a prestige horror film made by one of cinema's most meticulous and unconventional directors, adapted from Stephen King's bestselling 1977 novel of the same name. The story follows Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a winter caretaker position at the remote, out-of-season Overlook Hotel in Colorado, bringing his wife Wendy and their young son Danny along for the months of near-total isolation. What unfolds over those 144 minutes is a psychological horror that operates as much on dread and unease as on anything you could call conventional scares. King's source novel had already built a loyal readership, which meant Kubrick was working with pre-existing expectations, and the film's relationship with the book remains a point of discussion among fans to this day. Kubrick took liberties, some subtle and some significant, and King himself has been vocal over the years about his reservations regarding the adaptation.

By 1980, Kubrick had long established himself as a director who refused to be confined to a single mode or genre. His back catalogue ranged from lean, tightly wound crime pictures (if you want a sense of where he started, my reviews of Killer's Kiss and The Killing give a good picture of his early work) through to the vast, philosophical science fiction of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Shining was produced through his own Hawk Films banner alongside Peregrine, with Warner Bros. distributing. It was shot largely at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, with location photography in the American Rockies for exteriors, giving the finished film a polished but oddly stateless quality, grand and claustrophobic in equal measure. Kubrick's famously exacting approach to production, including an enormous number of takes and a reportedly gruelling shoot for the cast, became as much a part of the film's mythology as the footage itself.

The cast assembled around the project is a strong one. Jack Nicholson, already a major star off the back of films like Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, takes the lead role of Jack Torrance, bringing his characteristic intensity to a character whose mental deterioration is the film's central engine. Shelley Duvall plays Wendy, a performance that was, by many accounts, extracted under considerable pressure from Kubrick on set, and which gives the character a raw, exhausted quality. Young Danny Lloyd plays their son Danny, the boy with the psychic ability known as "the shining", and Scatman Crothers appears as Dick Hallorann, the hotel's head chef who shares Danny's gift. Barry Nelson rounds out the principal cast in an early scene as the hotel manager Stuart Ullman, setting the whole grim arrangement in motion with studied, corporate cheerfulness.

This is my 2nd or 3rd viewing so the score is a little affected by that. I get it. I really get it. This film is a masterpiece of atmosphere, cinematography, and slow-burn horror, and its influence is undeniable. Kubrick crafted something chilling, surreal, and unforgettable. The visuals alone (the endless hallways, the snowy maze, the blood-soaked elevators) are burned into cinematic history. But man… it’s slow . Like, really slow. And repeat viewings haven’t been kind. The pacing feels even more glacial the second or third time around. The iconic scenes are genius, yes, but they’ve been parodied, quoted, and memed to death, so it’s hard to feel their full impact if you’re coming in already familiar with the cultural references. Jack Nicholson is brilliant, of course, but the emotional distance Kubrick leans into makes it hard to connect with the characters the way you might want to. It’s more fascinating than frightening at this point. Still a must-watch, at least once. Just don’t be surprised if you end up more impressed than entertained.

For me, that tension between admiration and actual enjoyment is something I keep coming back to with certain films of this era and this pedigree. There are sequences here that are genuinely extraordinary as pieces of filmmaking craft, organised with a precision that few directors could match. But craft and experience aren't always the same thing, and on a repeat watch, the seams of construction can become more visible than the magic. I find I respect The Shining enormously, and I'd never talk anyone out of seeing it. It's just that "you should watch this" and "I had a great time watching this" can be two very different sentences. Sometimes a film earns its place in the canon and still leaves you slightly cold on the sofa. That's not a flaw, exactly. It's just honest.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1980  | Watched: 2025-07-18

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Stanley Kubrick: The Killing (1956) · Killer's Kiss (1955) · 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
More with Jack Nicholson: Chinatown (1974) · One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
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