A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.
This alternate version, while fascinating to finally see, turns the film into a much more conventional ghost story, with heightened spectral activity and some honkingly acted expositional scenes.
Deeply scary and strange.
Atmospheric, blackly funny and utterly terrifying.
Ostensibly a haunted house story, it manages to traverse a complex world of incipient madness, spectral murder and supernatural visions... and also makes you jump.
Tense, cold and still eerie after all these years, The Shining is perhaps one of Kubrick’s most underrated and under-appreciated films, and a must see for every horror fan.
The longer running time does increase the sense, both terrible and exhilarating, of being trapped in Kubrick's magnificent, malevolent nightmare, never to escape.
Reopened for business, Kubrick’s hotel horror holds surprises around every corner. Back where it should be – the cinema – its artful ambiguities are immersive. Check in.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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