The Shining

Kubrick’s dizzyingly claustrophobic horror classic.

Jack Torrance takes a job as caretaker at The Overlook Hotel, looking after it during the winter months when it is closed. Before he leaves, management asks whether he can handle such prolonged isolation. Jack brushes off the warning, seeing the job as a perfect opportunity to finally find the peace and quiet to write the novel he has wanted to write for so long. He sets off with his wife and their young son. But a snowstorm leaves the little family completely cut off from the outside world.

The story of The Shining moves somewhere on the border between dream and reality. Kubrick’s visualisation of Jack’s accelerating madness is expressed through stunning cinematography: the camera glides silkily through the hotel’s endless, identical corridors, its vast kitchen and lavish ballrooms, making people seem small in these overwhelming surroundings. Jack Nicholson gives one of his greatest performances as Jack Torrance, who desperately tries to fight the forces around him but gradually loses control of himself.