The Shining (1980)

The Overlook’s carpet is scarier than half the ghosts, and the movie knows it. That orange hexagon pattern follows you home. Here’s the honest problem: Jack Nicholson looks unhinged from the job interview on, so there’s no slow slide into madness, just a man going from creepy to creepier. And Wendy mostly screams and swings a bat, which gives Shelley Duvall way less room than she deserves. Kubrick doesn’t care about any of that. He cares about long hallways, the camera trailing Danny’s big wheel from carpet to hardwood to carpet, the twins at the end of the corridor, and those typewriter pages (no details, but oof). It runs 146 minutes and feels like an entire winter. It has a C+ CinemaScore, which tells you how audiences felt walking out, and now 1.25 million IMDb ratings average an 8.4. An 8.5 because nothing else feels this cold and this wrong for this long. $2,261 says you pass a hotel hallway with patterned carpet and check both ends before you walk it.

What works: Kubrick’s gliding camera, the endless hallways and the cold, wrong atmosphere make the Overlook one of the scariest places in movies.

What doesn’t: Jack Nicholson seems unhinged from his first scene, so there’s no real slide into madness, and Shelley Duvall’s Wendy gets mostly screaming to do.

Who it’s for: Horror fans who prefer dread to jump scares, and anyone who has ever been stuck inside with family for way too long.