Stanley Kubrick’s cryptic horror classic The Shining is wide open to interpretation, and that ambiguity has led to the development of countless fan theories about its deeper meanings. All of Kubrick’s movies have ambiguous elements; he didn’t want you to understand his films at face value. Is Alex DeLarge really “cured” at the end of A Clockwork Orange? Is the Star Child going to enlighten Earth or destroy it at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey? But no Kubrick movie was more ambiguous than The Shining — it’s 144 minutes of unanswerable questions and indecipherable riddles.

There are so many fan theories about The Shining that there’s an entire feature-length documentary about them. Released in 2012, Room 237 analyzes every second of The Shining to uncover every hidden detail included in its runtime. My personal interpretation of the film as a whole is that it’s about alcoholism. The fact that the first ghost Jack sees is a bartender who gives him a full bottle of whiskey on the house seems to confirm that. But there are dozens of other theories interpreting the movie in different ways, and I can’t get enough of them.

10

It Was All A Dream

Much like David Lynch’s own psychological thrillers, The Shining follows a dream logic. Just like a dream, it doesn’t totally make sense and there are a few different ways to interpret what it means. The most literal interpretation would be that the movie is, in fact, a dream. “It was all a dream” is a cop-out explanation for mysterious storytelling, but The Shining actually includes a scene in which Jack wakes up from a terrifying nightmare in which Danny was hurt, only to find that Danny is, indeed, hurt. Maybe he’s still stuck in this bad dream.

9

Danny’s Apollo 11 Sweater Is Kubrick’s Confession That He Faked The Moon Landing

During one of several sequences in which Danny is seen playing with his toys in the halls of the Overlook H๏τel, he’s wearing a sweater bearing an image of the Apollo 11 shuttle. Some theorists believe that this sly bit of costuming is Kubrick’s subtle confession that he helped to fake the Moon landing. Kubrick changed Room 217 from the book to Room 237, seemingly for no reason. Perhaps coincidentally, the distance from the Earth to the Moon is around 237,000 miles. It’s quite a stretch, but this is a fascinating theory to ponder.

8

The Shining Is Secretly About CIA Mind Control Experiments

Apart from the general bizarreness of the film, there’s not much evidence to support this theory. But it’s become a popular reading of The Shining nonetheless. When Danny first sees the Grady twins, there’s a skiing poster that reads, “Monarch.” This piece of set decoration stands out, because Ullman said there was no skiing in the area. A theory claims that “Monarch” was the codename for the CIA’s notorious MKUltra mind control experiments. Based on this, the mind-bending madness of The Shining is believed to be an extravagant cinematic portrayal of shady CIA mind control.

7

The Twins Aren’t Grady’s Daughters

When Jack interviews for his job at the Overlook, he’s told the previous caretaker, Grady, murdered his two young daughters. So, when Danny sees two creepy twin girls staring back at him in the H๏τel hallway, followed by a quick cut to their blood-drenched corpses, it’s easy to ᴀssume they’re Grady’s daughters. But Jack is told the girls were “about eight and ten,” so they weren’t twins. This means that the girls Danny sees might not be Grady’s daughters after all. They could represent a memory from Wendy’s childhood, Danny’s relationship with his imaginary friend Tony, or something else entirely.

6

Wendy Is Hallucinating The Whole Thing

In the early scenes of The Shining, Wendy is shown to be deeply distressed about her volatile husband, and unsure of whether or not this job at the Overlook will be good for the family. There’s a common theory that Wendy hallucinates the events of The Shining. It could be a projection of Wendy’s fears about the job. She’s terrified that the isolation will drive Jack back to the bottle, and back to violence, so she imagines the worst-case scenario of a murderous relapse. This would explain why Wendy is so cartoonishly mistreated throughout the film.

5

The Shining Is All About Sєxual Abuse

Jack admits to hitting Danny, but his abuse could be much darker than that. The deep psychological terror of The Shining could be a cinematic representation of Danny’s trauma from being Sєxually abused. The film reflects a child’s idea of Sєxuality; Jack is kissed by a naked woman. It’s full of Sєxual images, like Jack reading Playgirl before his interview or a man in a teddy bear costume performing a Sєx act. Room 237 could be where the ᴀssault occurred, or it could represent the part of Danny’s mind where he repressed the trauma.

4

Theseus And The Minotaur

The Shining is believed to be a spooky reimagining of the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which Danny is Theseus, the hero, and Jack is the Minotaur, the monster that comes after him. Where the Minotaur chased Theseus through a labyrinth, Jack chases Danny through a hedge maze. Jack’s so-called Kubrick stare, with his head tilted forward and his eyes staring daggers, is similar to the look of a bull that’s about to charge. He even does this look while ominously gazing over a scale model of the hedge maze.

3

The Horrors Of The Overlook Represent The Horrors Inflicted Upon Native Americans

When Ullman interviews Jack, he tells him that the Overlook was built on a Native American burial ground. This was a common trope in ‘80s horror movies — also seen in Poltergeist and Pet Sematary — representing America’s guilt over the shameful misdeeds of its past. The Shining also features plenty of artwork featuring Native Americans and the American West, and Jack makes a reference to the “white man’s burden” from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about white imperialists. The horror story has been read as a metaphor for America’s past coming back to haunt it.

2

The Horrors Of The Overlook Represent The Horrors Of The Holocaust

Alternatively, The Shining could be an allegory for a different shameful chapter in history: the Holocaust. Jack wears a t-shirt bearing the Nazi symbol of an eagle, while the German-made model of his typewriter, “Adler,” translates to “eagle.” The soundtrack includes a few unsettling post-war compositions inspired by the Holocaust. The number 42 appears all over the movie — there are 42 cars in the parking lot, The Summer of ’42 plays on TV, and 2, 3, and 7 (from Room 237) all multiply to make 42 — which could be referring to 1942, the year the Nazis started “The Final Solution.”

1

The Overlook Is Hell

One of the most popular fan theories about The Shining — and one that I’m inclined to agree with — is that the Overlook represents Hell. It’s a hellish place where blood gushes out of the elevator, ghosts have Sєx with each other, and the Torrances are seemingly trapped there for all eternity, being punished to no end. The comparison between the Overlook and Hell is clearer in Stephen King’s original novel. At the end of the book, the H๏τel explodes into a spectacular ball of fire.

At the end of the movie, of course, Jack freezes to death, which is at odds with the usual fiery imagery of the underworld. But the final pH๏τo of Jack, front and center at a party in 1921, has a sly devilish connection. Jack’s stance, with one arm pointing up and the other pointing down, is eerily similar to the tarot card depicting the Devil. So, not only does The Shining imply that the Overlook is Hell; it implies that Jack is the Devil.