The Shining is considered the most popular horror movie of 1980. Stanley Kubrick produced and directed the film in 1980, and co-wrote the screenplay with novelist Diane Johnson. The movie stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd and is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name.
Jack Torrance (Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the lonely old Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies with his wife Wendy Torrance (Duvall) and little son Danny Torrance (Lloyd).
Danny has ‘the gleaming,’ psychic talents that allow him to peer into the hotel’s dark past. After the Torrances get snowbound owing to a winter blizzard, Jack’s sanity begins to erode due to the otherworldly entities that inhabit the hotel.
Warner Bros. released the movie in the United States on May 23, 1980, and in the United Kingdom on October 2, 1980. There were multiple theatrical versions, each of which was chopped slightly shorter than the one before it; in total, around 27 minutes were eliminated.
The movie received mixed reviews upon its initial release, with Stephen King criticizing it for deviating from the novel. Critical opinion has shifted in favor of the film, which is now widely regarded as one of the best and most influential horror films of all time and a pop culture standard. The Library of Congress chose the movie for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2018 because it is ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.’ Thirty-nine years later, on November 8, 2019, a sequel, Doctor Sleep, was released.
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