The Shining (1980) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on The Shining

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 11 November 2026 · The Pros 76 · The Punters 100 · Spore Score 81 · How we write our takes

Why The Punters rate it higher than The Pros

The Shining is a film whose reputation grew up after it came out. The Punters give it 100, The Pros 76, and the Spore Score lands on 81. That gap of 24 points is mostly history. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel opened in 1980 to a cool, puzzled reception from many critics, and King himself made no secret of disliking it. Audiences who found it later, on video and television, turned it into one of the most quoted and most rewatched horror films ever made. Critics' sites still carry some of that early doubt; audience ratings carry the cult.

What it does well

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a winter job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a vast mountain resort that is cut off by snow until spring. He brings his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their young son Danny (Danny Lloyd), who has a psychic gift the hotel's cook calls "shining". The isolation, and something in the building, slowly works on Jack.

Kubrick makes the hotel the monster. The long Steadicam shots that follow Danny's tricycle down the corridors, the patterned carpet, the impossible layout of rooms and the empty ballroom create a dread that has nothing to do with jump scares. The twins in the hallway, the lift full of blood and the typewriter pages are now pop-culture shorthand, but they still land in context.

Where people push back

The Pros' reservations are easy to understand. Nicholson seems unhinged almost from the first scene, so there is less of a fall than in the book. The pace is deliberately slow. Some of the supernatural rules are never explained, and Kubrick changes the ending entirely. Duvall's performance has been argued over for decades, as has the gruelling way the film was shot.

Who it is for

Anyone who prefers creeping unease to gore, and anyone who enjoys a film they can pick apart afterwards. It rewards a second viewing more than almost any horror film.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Must-see, with a Spore Score of 81. The Punters were right to keep coming back to it. It is cold, strange and not quite the book, and that is exactly why it lasts.