The Shining opens with cinematographer John Alcott's eerie, beautiful aerial shots of Colorado's empty byways — it's a gorgeous, unsettling scene-setter for Stanley Kubrick's classic adaptation of Stephen King's novel. Struggling writer Jack Torrance (a scenery-chewing Jack Nicholson) volunteers his family to be winter caretakers at the mountain-locked Overlook Hotel. In between big-wheel rides through the Overlook's cavernous halls, Jack's son Danny begins witnessing supernatural phenomena (most famously, a pair of twin wraiths) while his dad grins and grimaces his way into homicidal mania. Although it's been parodied into overfamiliarity, Kubrick's singular vision of psychosis still unsettles, with its slow-roast suspense punctuated by bursts of neck-snapping aggression.
– Jason Jude Chan
