The Shining review: Kubrick’s hotel from hell still bites
Forty-odd years on, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror with Jack Nicholson still gets under the skin. Here’s why The Shining deserves a winter rewatch on Sky, NOW or HBO Max.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
Contents
Most of us first saw The Shining at the wrong age, on a wobbly VHS at a mate’s house, with the volume turned down so nobody’s mum would hear. It did lasting damage. I still can’t walk down a long hotel corridor without walking a bit faster, which makes for a stressful city break.
So is Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror still as frightening now that we’re the ones paying the heating bills? Mostly, yes. It may even be worse, because these days you notice how much of the horror comes from a man who’s failing at his job and slowly turning on his own family.
Premiere1980-05-23
GenreHorror, Thriller
CastJack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
Directed byStanley Kubrick
Running time144 min
Rated15
Watch onSky, NOW, HBO Max
82%
AD
A winter job with no exit
The set-up is about as simple as horror gets. Jack Torrance takes the job of caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, a grand mountain resort that closes for the winter. He moves in with his wife Wendy and their young son Danny, and the three of them face months cut off from everyone else. Jack plans to use the peace to write. Danny, a quiet and watchful boy, picks up on things the adults can’t. And the hotel, enormous and immaculate and completely empty, seems to be waiting for something.
That’s all you need going in. The fun of a first watch, and there’s probably someone in your house who hasn’t had one, is seeing just how slowly Kubrick turns the screw. It runs 144 minutes, and a good part of that is people walking around very large rooms. Somehow that’s the scariest thing in it.
Nicholson, Duvall and a director who wouldn’t let it go
Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, and you could say he arrives already a bit unhinged. He has the eyebrows of a man who has never once been entirely all right. It’s a big, operatic performance, and it has been quoted, parodied and turned into Halloween costumes so often that it’s easy to forget how unsettling it is in context. The small moments are where it really works: the irritation, the sulking, the sense of a man who resents the people he’s supposed to be looking after.
Shelley Duvall’s Wendy is the film’s raw nerve. She plays it so wide open that you feel every bit of her fear, and she’s the one the audience ends up clinging to. Danny Lloyd, as Danny, is eerily natural, and Scatman Crothers brings real warmth as one of the few grown-ups who understands the boy. Barry Nelson and Philip Stone fill out a small cast where nobody is quite what they seem.
Behind all of it is Stanley Kubrick, whose obsessive control shows in every frame. The symmetry, the gliding camera following Danny’s tricycle through the corridors, the carpets that look like a bad dream: it all adds up to a building with a personality, and not a nice one.
The Overlook is the real star: a hotel so perfectly arranged that every room feels like the wrong one to be in.
AD
What still works, and what creaks
The atmosphere is untouchable. Kubrick goes for dread rather than jump-scares, and the eerie, droning soundtrack keeps you on edge even when nothing is happening on screen. Better still, the film never fully explains itself. Is it the hotel, or is it Jack? You can argue about that over a pint for years, and plenty of people have.
The flaws are real, though. The pace will test anyone used to modern horror that has a scare every four minutes. Nicholson’s performance, brilliant as it is, rises so steeply that some viewers will find it closer to pantomime than psychology. And it’s hard to watch Wendy’s ordeal now without a slight wince about what was asked of the actor playing her.
How it has been received
The Shining’s reputation has done what its caretaker couldn’t: it has kept on growing. Once seen as one of Kubrick’s oddities, it now sits firmly among the most discussed horror films ever made, and whole books and documentaries have been devoted to unpicking its imagery. Audiences have done their part too. The film is consistently among the highest-rated horror titles on IMDb, where user reviews are full of praise, with one summing it up as “timeless terror”.
It also shows how far a film can drift from its source. It began as a Stephen King novel, and the arguments about how faithful Kubrick needed to be have rumbled on for decades. Watch it as Kubrick’s film rather than King’s and you’ll get on with it much better.
Where to watch The Shining in the UK
The Shining was released in 1980 and carries a 15 certificate in the UK. It’s currently streaming on Sky and NOW, and it’s also on HBO Max. If you already have a Sky subscription, check your movies package first. If you don’t, a NOW membership with the cinema pass is the cheapest no-contract way in. Put the lights down, close the curtains, and try not to think about the corridor outside your door.
Verdict
The Shining is still a masterclass in dread: slow, beautiful, ambiguous and properly frightening, with Nicholson at his most volcanic and Duvall giving the film its beating heart. It drags in places and Nicholson sometimes tips into excess, but very few horror films hold up this well. It’s essential for anyone who saw it too young on VHS and wants to find out whether it still works (it does), and a good way to show the younger lot what horror looked like before the jump-scare took over.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
Thirty-odd years on, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas still has the sharpest suits, the best soundtrack and the scariest dinner guests in cinema. It’s on Sky and NOW, if you need an excuse.
Twenty-odd years on, David Chase’s mob drama still shows every prestige series how it’s done. Here’s why The Sopranos deserves a rewatch, and where to stream it in the UK.
Peacock’s Friday the 13th prequel gives Pam Voorhees her own story. Linda Cardellini is terrific, the show around her less so. Here’s whether it deserves a slot on your Sky box.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare’s son, who died in 1596, and of the family he left behind. It’s beautiful and hard going, and now it’s on Sky and NOW.
