Reviews & Ratings for
The Shining (1980)

This is possibly one of the scariest horror films ever made. Eerily scary, THE SHINING is a masterpiece of terror. Jack Nicholson and Shelly DuVall are good as the happily married couple who are torn apart when they and their son, Danny (Danny Floyd) take on the job as caretakers of the Overlook Hotel.
When I judge a movie, I break them down into small niche categories, and this one falls in Psychological Horror. Brilliantly made. Apart from few other films, it ranks among the best horror movie of all time. The film did not really scare me, but it petrified me. Well done, Stephen King!

All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy in Academy-Award winning director Stanley Kubrick's horror classic, The Shining. Kubrick uses his wild imagination to create the most unforgettable psychological horror film in the history of cinema based on the bestselling novel from the master of horror himself, Stephen King. The plot follows author Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy and their son Danny spending five months in a hotel called "The Overlook" in the isolated mountains of Colorado after Jack is given the job of the caretaker while the other one goes on vacation. However, he warns them that a previous caretaker went insane and murdered his family. But the family is completely comfortable about spending time in the hotel. That is until Danny possesses a supernatural power known as "The Shining" that allows him to see the hotel's dark past finding out the hotel is haunted by the ghosts of the murdered family. To make make matters worse, as the harsh winter arrives and the family is stranded inside, Jack living in isolation and struggling with a writers block and troubled by the hotel's past begins to lose his sanity, slowly descending into madness causing him to turn on his family members. Will Wendy and Danny be able to escape the perilous hotel before it's too late? After I watching "The Shining" last night, it was much scarier than I anticipated. Most of all, Jack Nicholson gives a creepy and comedic Oscar-worthy performance. The film has plenty of iconic moments such as Danny encountering the ghosts of the murdered Grady twins and the famous scene where Jack Torrance sticks his head through the door and shouts, "Here's Johnny!". Like Ridley Scott's Alien, Kubrick makes a good use of setting such as a hotel high up in the mountains to give viewers a feeling of isolation and to make the safety of your own home creepier. Also, the Overlook hotel gives you a feeling of claustrophobia-the fear of enclosed spaces. Unlike most horror films, what makes "The Shining" so unique is rather than focusing on something supernatural like ghosts, demons, monsters, and aliens the film instead focuses on the mentally unstable brain of a normal human being. It's also a good movie to watch for those of you during quarantine since this is a movie about being in isolation. So if you ever find this horror masterpiece, turn out the lights and enjoy the movie for the thrill ride it is.

So happy I finally watched this, what an amazing film. I really can't say anything that hasn't already been said, other than that I didn't really find it scary more creepy, and errie, but still great, the performances are great, the cinematography/set design is amazing, and the whole film, and subject is soo spectacular, and sublime.

Isolated Hotel, twin sisters, paranoid child and an unemployed writer taking up the job to take care of the hotel.Perfect recipe for a scary ride.REDRUM REDRUM!!!

A Stephen King novel with Kubrick Twist!

Jack Nicholson was bang on with every role he played in the 1980s and 1990s.

He plays a writer Jack Torrance who is yet to write something meaningful and needs the money to go on and finds this Hotel which is located out of nowhere.

To earn a quick buck he agrees to become the caretaker of this Hotel and brings his family along with to live in the hotel.

His son has some sort of a telepathic gift known as “The Shining” due to which he sees disturbing visions of the hotel’s past.

It turns into a nightmare for Jack and his wife Wendy(Portrayed by Shelley Duvall) as the solitude and eerie situations fiddles with their imagination and the quote “An Idle Mind is Devil’s Workshop” comes at play with Jack Nicholson going all apey on his wife and child and becomes hell-bent on killing them.

The visions of the by show him two twin girls and he keeps uttering the words REDRUM REDRUM to his mother.

The Staircase sequence and the bathroom sequence are the most horrifying scenes with an equally daunting background score to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Now this movie has been both.Some like to think it's a horror genre masterpiece, some think it's just total nonsense.

You got to watch it to either be amazed by the storytelling or curse the director for ruining the book.

Key things to watch out for:
1)The mystery behind room 237
2)Jack Nicholson and his epic outbursts!
3)The end scene.