A review by wincher2031
The Shining by Stephen King

5.0

The Shining's glacial pacing deepens the complexity of its characters and evokes a steadily mounting dread. It's a tragic kind of horror: the scares being existential with roots in the human condition rather than being loud and cheap. It is a portrait of a family in decline due to outside forces destroying it from the inside. Eventually harrowing in its symbolic depiction of alcoholism, abuse and generational trauma, The Shining comforts at first with its reminders of the familiar and nostalgic. It creates memories before peeling them away to reveal the true horror: that they are prone to becoming twisted. People change or reveal themselves for who they truly are and the evils they are capable of, tainting the past before them. People who once loved each other end up separated through gradual building resentment through the various trials and tribulations of life, a truth that The Shining confronts with a stark beauty laying beneath its menagerie of terrors.