10 Best Movies To Watch If You Like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

From Hereditary to Possession, there are plenty of other great horror movies that fans of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining need to check out. Although it received mixed reviews and became a box office bomb on its initial release, The Shining has since become a beloved classic. Nearly half a century after it first hit theaters, The Shining still holds up as one of the most terrifying viewing experiences in the entire horror genre. It continues to influence horror filmmakers to this day, but those imitators rarely live up to the Kubrickian masterpiece that inspired them.

The Shining is a singular vision of horror cinema; there’s no other movie quite like it. But there are horror movies with a similarly unique vision, or a similarly cerebral tone, or even some shared plot elements, that fans of The Shining should watch. It Comes at Night is another example of a horror movie that uses its psychological thrills to emphasize the divisions between its characters. The Lighthouse is another story about characters quietly losing their minds in isolation. And Doctor Sleep is a straight-up sequel to The Shining that picks up where it left off.

10 Doctor Sleep

Released In 2019

The best movie to watch after The Shining is its own sequel, Doctor Sleep. Mike Flanagan adapted the movie from Stephen King’s sequel to the original novel, but he tweaked the story in a way that it could act as a sequel to both the book and Kubrick’s vastly different film adaptation.

Ewan McGregor stars as a grown-up Danny Torrance using his “shining” ability to save a little girl from a sadistic cult. In the third act, he goes back to the Overlook Hotel and Flanagan evokes plenty of familiar Kubrickian imagery.

9 The Dead Zone

Released In 1983

From It to Misery, there are plenty of other classic Stephen King adaptations that would make an interesting double feature with The Shining. Arguably the best King-based movie to pair with The Shining is The Dead Zone. It’s another distinctive take on King’s work by a visionary filmmaker (in this case, David Cronenberg) about another intriguing supernatural ability.

When he awakens from a coma, Christopher Walken finds that, every time he touches someone, he sees how they’re going to die. Like The Shining, if The Dead Zone stripped away its horror elements, it would still work as a straightforward drama.

8 The Lighthouse

Released In 2019

At its core, The Shining is a story about a small group of people who gradually lose their minds together while they’re stuck in isolation. Robert Eggers told a very similar story in his similarly bizarre, similarly confounding horror hit The Lighthouse.

Rather than a snowbound hotel, this one takes place at — you guessed it — a lighthouse, surrounded by crashing waves.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe star as two lighthouse keepers who quickly grow to resent each other as they’re cut off from all other human contact. The Lighthouse also shares The Shining’s horrifying imagery and pitch-black humor.

7 Don't Look Now

Released In 1973

The Shining’s story of a traumatized family taking a trip for a change of scenery and finding that their trauma has followed them there is similar to Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. After losing their daughter in a tragic accident, a couple moves to Venice to restore a church and process their grief.

The current horror trend of monsters representing trauma can be traced back to Don’t Look Now — and it’s still one of the best examples of that conceit. Don’t Look Now masterfully builds to one of the most deeply unsettling endings in horror movie history.

6 It Comes At Night

Released In 2017

What sets The Shining apart from other horror movies is its somber tone and patient pacing. It’s more interested in digging into the conflicts tearing the characters apart than the ghosts haunting them. Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night shares this quality.

Distrust becomes a virus of its own within their quarantine.

It has the setup of a horror movie, with two families forced to hole up together during the outbreak of a highly contagious disease, but it focuses more on the divisions between these characters than the deadly illness that threatens to wipe them out. Distrust becomes a virus of its own within their quarantine.

5 Eraserhead

Released In 1977

Before production began on The Shining, Kubrick screened David Lynch’s debut feature Eraserhead for the cast and crew to give them an idea of the mood he was trying to create. It’s easy to see where the influence came from; they have very different stories, but very similar stylistic approaches.

Much like The Shining, Eraserhead uses simple but fiercely effective tricks to create terror, like putting an unnerving twist on mundane everyday situations and layering ambient noise over every scene. And, much like The Shining, Eraserhead is both an unforgettably terrifying experience and a work of pure cinema.

4 Room 237

Released In 2012

Room 237

Documentary

Release Date: October 26, 2012
Runtime: 102 minutes
Director: Rodney Ascher
Writers: Rodney Ascher

Cast

Bill Blakemore
Geoffrey Cocks
Juli Kearns
John Fell Ryan

Main Genre: Documentary

There are so many fan theories about The Shining that Rodney Ascher managed to fill a whole feature-length documentary with them.Room 237 chronicles every reading of The Shining, whether it’s the interpretation that it’s about the horrors of the Holocaust and the slaughter of Native Americans or the assertion that it’s Kubrick’s grand cinematic confession that he helped the U.S. government fake the Moon landing. It’s a perfect companion piece to The Shining. If you’re struggling to wrap your head around the deeper meanings hidden in The Shining, Room 237 is required viewing.

3 Suspiria

Released In 2018

One of The Shining’s closest competitors for the title of greatest horror movie ever made is Dario Argento’s supernatural opus Suspiria.Suspiria revolves around an American ballet student who comes to a prestigious dance academy in West Germany and slowly arrives at the haunting realization that it’s a front for a sinister coven of witches.

Argento shares Kubrick’s eye for deeply unsettling imagery, and much like Kubrick, he’s not afraid to leave things ambiguous, so the audience can draw their own conclusions. Suspiria is just as cerebral and mesmerizing a piece of cinema as The Shining.

2 Hereditary

Released In 2018

The genius of The Shining is that it uses its disturbing horror imagery to reflect the deep dysfunctions of a broken family unit. Kubrick’s approach had a huge influence on the horror genre, and one of the best recent examples is Ari Aster’s Hereditary, in which the supernatural forces terrorizing a family are a metaphor for their collective grief.

Hereditary is as terrifying as any horror film, but it’s also as moving as any family drama. Toni Collette gives an Oscar-worthy performance in the lead role and Aster perfectly balances terror and tragedy.

1 Possession

Released In 2009

Just as Kubrick uses horror tropes to capture the stress and anxiety of marital tensions in The Shining, Andrzej Żuławski ratchets up the psychological thrills after a couple starts preparing for a divorce in Possession. Being trapped in a toxic relationship can feel similar to being possessed by a demonic spirit, and Possession leans into that parallel spectacularly. Isabelle Adjani’s breathtaking performance in the notorious subway tunnel sequence is both a masterclass in physical acting and a perfect visualization of the anguish of being stuck in a terrible relationship like Wendy Torrance’s marriage to Jack.

There are plenty of great movies like The Shining. There are plenty of similarly visionary horror films that tell traditional ghost stories with a subversively surreal sensibility. But no other movie captures the raw terror, haunting cinematography, and fiercely effective psychological torment of The Shining quite like Possession does. Possession is so terrifying, it was banned and labeled a “video nasty.”

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