The Shining at 40

“Forever and ever (and ever)” since its release, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) has generated an uncanny amount of literature, by critics and fans alike. The critical response, following initially lukewar...

Much like Alfred Hitchcock with Psycho (1960), Stanley Kubrick sought, with The Shining (1980), to conduct an experiment in cinematic fear. While neither of the films can be reduced to it, this experimental dim...

Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) is a film about isolation and the threat of an invisible evil. It relates to our current situation insofar as now, in spring 2020, with the world locked down due to a microscopic en...

In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson famously takes the Westin Bonaventure Hotel as an emblem of postmodern impersonality. “The Bonaventure,” he argues, “aspires to being...

It is a common trope that authors rarely like films based on their novels. Stephen King, who at the time of this writing has seen 48 feature films and 26 television series adapted from his works, is no exceptio...

The end of The Shining will always be enigmatic. In the movie’s final scene we see a photograph taken at the Overlook Hotel on July 4, 1921. It shows Jack Torrance front and center as the Gatsby-like maestro of...

If, as I have argued elsewhere, Stanley Kubrick is an intellectual, Jewish, and “Talmudic” filmmaker, his text most susceptible to Jewish or Talmudic readings or, at least which has attracted the most scholarsh...

Through the character of Danny Torrance, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining influenced a new model of uncanny child character that has become a key trope of the horror genre since the film’s release in 1980. This ty...

A number of recurring motifs, themes and ‘signature’ styles have been attributed to Stanley Kubrick over the years, mostly from an auteurist perspective. These include, for example, the use of mirrors, facial c...

Note Few buildings in the history of cinema are as essential to the plot of a film as the Overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The film recounts the experience of the Torrance family who come to ...

In The Shining no attention is drawn to it and it appears open, such that the page layouts are recognisable, only three times. This is perhaps why up to now, despite its essential role in King’s novel, the Scra...