Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of this 1977 novel by Stephen King. Jack is an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker at an isolated hotel. Staying with Jack during the winter is his son Danny and wife Wendy. Danny has a supernatural ability known as "the shining," which allows him to see the hotel's bloody past. Through these visions, the audience learns that the previous caretaker went crazy and murdered his family. Soon Jack's sanity wavers as well, putting the lives of both his wife and son on the line.
The influences of The Shining on Us are numerous — from the use of those creepy twins to the fact that both families travel to a remote location and encounter an otherworldly phenomenon. But most chillingly, these films share the theme of questioning what happens when we succumb to our primal urges. In the book Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films by Paul Duncan, Kubrick states that the theme of The Shining deals with the splitting of the human mind: "There's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly." In the case of Us, Peele allows the Wilsons' dark sides — the Tethered — to run free so that we as the audience are forced to ask ourselves whether the face we show the world is an accurate reflection of what lies beneath.
You can watch The Shining online at Google Play.