Movie Endings Explained – The Shining (video)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Movie endings, they’re usually pretty straight forward right? Everything pays off, the main characters learn something, and our heroes ride off into the sunset. Sometimes though, we don’t get the typical ending from a movie, we get something much more nuanced, complex and open ended. The kind of endings that leave things up in the air for all of us to debate and theorize on until we’re blue in the face. With Movie Endings Explained, we aim to delve into some of the more ambiguous and mysterious endings to films that have left audiences scratching their heads for years, and to attempt to explain them. In most cases, a definitive answer isn’t really there, so we definitely want to hear from YOU on how you interpret the various endings we’ll be discussing with this series.

This time, we’re looking at master director Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 horror classic THE SHINING, starring Jack Nicholson. While it’s revered today as a masterpiece, at the time of its release, THE SHINING wasn’t all that well received, with Kubrick even getting nominated for Worst Director at the Razzies (yeah, yeah I know, but still?!). One thing that been a constant however, is the near instant growth of theories over the movie’s mysteries, particularly in relation to the shocking last shot of the film. For almost four decades now, the answer to the film’s final mystery is still being sought out. So in this installment of Movie Endings Explained we look in to the various possibilities and theories that are out there on the film’s ending, delving into Stanley Kubrick and screenwriter Diane Johnson‘s thoughts on the final scene, and even the lost epilogue that perhaps served to make the ending even more puzzling…