The Shining

The supernatural joins forces with psychosis in Stanley Kubrick’s superb adaptation of a Stephen King bestseller.

Kubrick sabotages his own thesis in the most knuckleheaded way conceivable: we can't be charged as accomplices in horror when there is no horror.

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.

"The Shining" is woke, both in that the movie subtly addresses complex social issues and because the in-universe clairvoyant act of shining allows characters to see past and future atrocities (some politically charged) that occurred in the Overlook Hotel.

It's an interesting movie, but not the ultimate work in its genre that some expected from one of the great directors.

The altered tone suits Kubrick's gallows humor, which was always about confronting and critiquing his audience's baser impulses: reinventing The Shining as a slapstick comedy about murderous patriarchal insecurity is a daring move.

A trip to the Overlook is the perfect antidote to any film buff who may feel bummed out after another mediocre trip to the movies&#59; if all else fails, this is one you can boot up in any mood, at any time, for any reason, and it’ll do the trick

With 45 years gone since it first released, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining definitely remains a horror classic, in spite of its adaptation problems.

Kubrick may take some liberties with King's material, but the result is undeniably one of horror's greatest classics. Also: justice for DuVall and her performance as Wendy

Despite The Outlook’s advantages, a hysterical, bookworm, couch potato, chain smoking wife beats it. Kubrick did not intend to create a film about evil’s Achilles heel, but I left with that message. Be a mess, but fight.