The Shining was one of the first films I bought on DVD and I’ve replaced that disc twice since. The cable cuts I grew up on were panned and scanned and color-corrected to hell. The Warner Bros. 4K is the version that finally looks like the film I have in my head.
The 35mm scan brings the carpets back into focus, brings depth to the wallpaper and you can finally read the Apollo 11 knit on Danny’s sweater from across the room. The dark corners of the gold ballroom and the shadows in the Torrance apartment hold real detail instead of crushing to black like every prior version.
Color reproduction is where this disc separates itself, with Room 237 carrying a sickly green cast that makes me uncomfortable every time and elevator blood so saturated it looks like the wet wave it was meant to be. The finale in the snow uses HDR for clean specular highlights, and the Dolby Vision layer adds noticeable stability over the HDR10.
The 7.1 DTS-HD mix is good, with low-frequency drones that sit at the edge of uncomfortable and Danny’s tricycle clack on the hardwood after the carpet stretch that makes my arm hair stand up. Dialogue sits a touch low, but a small bump on the receiver fixes it.
I went back to the 1080p afterward and it looked muddy. This is the version I would put on for someone asking what 4K is all about.
