Cocks argues that Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining "is [a] unique contribution to the body of film on the Holocaust." Kubrick uses the horror film and Gothic novel genre for an indirect discourse about the Holocaust—a "veiled benchmark of human

evil." Cocks examines in detail the film's themes of the past influencing the present, the emotional dynamics of family life, and the violence of twentieth-century man. He draws conclusions about implicit childhood conflicts and documents the many references to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He concludes that the film is aimed at making the audience critically aware of such internal dynamics and their historical importance, as well as the ways in which the genre itself avoids and distorts the human and historical reality of its subject matter.