Master Rank #73

The Shining

1980

GCML Total9.2440% Greatness · 40% Engagement · 20% Ease

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

CastJack Nicholson · Shelley Duvall · Danny Lloyd

USA / UKEnglishHorror / Thriller144 minR
Sight & Sound; IMDb Top 250Narrative FeatureBrisk pace
Original poster artwork · Great Cinema Master List

Spoiler-free premise

Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny.

Read expanded premiseLonger, still spoiler-free

Writer Jack Torrance becomes winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel and moves there with Wendy and their son Danny. As snow cuts off the property, Danny's psychic visions and the hotel's past begin pressing against the family's fragile stability.

Why it belongs

Stanley Kubrick makes the Overlook Hotel a maze of symmetry, impossible space, sound, and repetition where family pressure becomes cosmic dread.

Read expanded why it belongsThe fuller editorial case

Kubrick designs the Overlook as impossible mental architecture through Steadicam movement, symmetrical corridors, patterned carpets, dissonant music, and abrupt temporal gaps, while the family's performances make supernatural dread inseparable from domestic terror.

Major award wins

No verified wins in this six-institution crosswalk.

Awards are reference metadata only · zero points in 40/40/20

Continue the conversation

Double Feature