12 Movies That Made You Work Out The Answer Yourself

10. The Shining

The Question: What was the meaning behind the old Overlook Hotel photograph, which features Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) despite being taken in 1921, some 60 years before the movie's events took place?

Director Stanley Kubrick has suggested that the scene was meant to imply that Jack was the reincarnation of a previous hotel caretaker, which lines up with spectral butler Grady (Philip Stone) creepily telling him, "You've always been the caretaker."

Some fans, however, have theorised that the picture represents Jack's soul being absorbed by the hotel, and the other party guests in the picture are perhaps even other people "claimed" by the Overlook. This would also fit well with Grady's line, that Jack is trapped in that single moment in the photograph forever more, destined to always be there.

Whether you take Kubrick at his word or accept that a creator's work no longer explicitly belongs to them once it's out in the wild, it's a tantalising mystery that's baffled fans for almost 40 years.