It features one of Hollywood’s most legendary actors, was crafted by one of cinema’s most celebrated directors and draws from a novel by one of the globe’s bestselling authors.
So it’s hardly surprising that it earned the title of “the scariest horror movie ever made” whilst simultaneously being hailed as one of the finest films in history. Stanley Kubrick’s monumental and disturbing masterpiece The Shining arrived in cinemas in 1980, adapted from Stephen King’s novel of the same name (although King is said to dislike the film adaptation).
Jack Nicholson delivers one of his earliest performances as Jack Torrance, a father who accepts a position as winter caretaker at a remote hotel, completely isolated by thick snowfall.
A former caretaker had murdered his wife, two young daughters and taken his own life at the hotel 10 years prior.
Whether driven by isolation, paranormal influences or his deteriorating mental state, Torrance spirals into madness, becoming violent, deranged and obsessed with killing his family.
The film features one of cinema’s most unforgettable scenes, when Torrance wields an axe to smash through a door to reach his wife, Wendy, who shrieks in horror as she watches. As he creates a hole in the door, Torrance declares: “Wendy, I’m home.”
The film failed to secure any Academy Awards but nonetheless became an eternal classic. In 2010, The Guardian hailed it as a victor in its Horror category in its Greatest Films Of All Time and Empire places it 35th in its list of the best films ever, stating: “Stanley Kubrick’s elegant adaptation of Stephen King’s haunted-hotel story, starring a wonderfully deranged Jack Nicholson, is often cited as The Scariest Horror Movie Ever Made (perhaps tied with The Exorcist), but it’s also the Least Suitable Movie To Watch On Father’s Day Ever. Unless you’re the kind of Dad who thinks obsessively typing the same sentence over and over then chasing after your wife and kid with an axe constitutes good parenting.”
Stephen King was not a fan of The Shining
Renowned author Stephen King, one of the world’s most recognised and best selling writers who is also behind the stories of classics like The Shawshank Redemption, It, The Green Mile and Stand By Me, did not appreciate Kubrick’s film.
“When it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favourable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much,” King has admitted.
“The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know, then, he’s crazy as a sh**house rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change.”
He branded the picture as “a beautiful film and it looks terrific” but criticised it as being “like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”.
Although supposedly taking place in the snowy American mountains, the majority of The Shining was actually shot at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England.
Nevertheless, certain exterior sequences were captured in the States, with the Timberline Lodge in Oregon providing the establishing footage of the fictional Overlook Hotel.
The lodge operates as a ski resort and genuinely becomes cut off and isolated in reality, mirroring the film’s premise.
Describing the picture as “deeply scary and strange”, The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw remarked of The Shining: “The unhurried pace, extended dialogue scenes and those sudden, sinister inter-titles 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. The Shining doesn’t look like a genre film. It looks like a Kubrick film.”
Writing in The Times, Wendy Ide hailed it as a “superb adaptation” where “the supernatural joins forces with psychosis”, whilst Ben Walters in Time Out branded it “a masterpiece”.
However, David Denby, penning his review in New York Magazine, offered a contrasting view: “There are a few terrific thrills, and some eerie moments of dislocation that only Kubrick could achieve, but most of the movie is unfelt, unscary, and bizarrely heavy-handed. It’s the first pompous haunted-house movie.”