Watching Eyes Wide Shut now feels less like revisiting a late-’90s curiosity and more like opening a time capsule that somehow knew the future would be uneasy. On its surface, it’s a slow, hypnotic marital psychodrama; underneath, it’s a film about power, access, and the things polite society prefers not to acknowledge. In the wake of renewed public attention on elite secrecy and abuse—sparked by the “Epstein Files” era conversations—the movie lands with an extra chill, even if it never claims to be a literal exposé.

What makes Eyes Wide Shut endure is how stubbornly it refuses easy interpretation. Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford wanders through a Manhattan that feels slightly unreal, following desire, curiosity, and wounded ego more than logic. The infamous masked-ritual sequence isn’t shocking because it’s explicit—it’s shocking because it’s impersonal. Sex, here, is stripped of intimacy and turned into a performance staged by the powerful for the powerful. In today’s cultural climate, it’s hard not to read that scene as a metaphor for systems that protect themselves through silence and spectacle.

None of this works without Stanley Kubrick’s precision. Kubrick isn’t interested in revelation; he’s interested in discomfort. He shows Bill just enough to unsettle him, then pulls the rug out before anything can be confirmed. The film’s great trick is making you feel like you’re circling a truth that will never quite come into focus. That ambiguity—once frustrating to audiences expecting a thriller—is exactly why the movie now feels prophetic rather than dated.

What Kubrick seems to be saying about the elite—especially now, in the shadow of Epstein-era revelations—is less “here is the secret” and more “here is how secrecy functions.” In Stanley Kubrick’s world, power doesn’t need to explain itself; it just needs to close ranks. The masked gathering isn’t frightening because of what happens there, but because of how calmly it’s managed, how easily Bill is dismissed once he’s served his narrative purpose. Kubrick frames the elite not as cartoon villains but as a social force insulated by wealth, ritual, and mutual protection—people who don’t panic when exposed because exposure itself is temporary. In light of Epstein, that feels eerily prescient: not a prediction of specific crimes, but a clear-eyed understanding that systems of privilege are designed to absorb scandal, redirect blame, and keep moving, while outsiders are gently—or firmly—reminded to forget what they think they’ve seen.

The new 4K release from Criterion Collection only sharpens that effect. The restoration brings out the velvety darkness of Kubrick’s night scenes, the oppressive warmth of the Christmas lights, and the eerie stillness of the interiors. It finally looks the way it always felt—like a dream you’re not sure you’re allowed to remember. The clarity doesn’t demystify the film; it deepens it.

What’s important to say plainly: Eyes Wide Shut isn’t a conspiracy movie, and it doesn’t need to be. Kubrick isn’t telling us who runs the world or what secret groups “really” do. He’s asking a more unsettling question: what happens when an ordinary, privileged man glimpses how little power he actually has—and how quickly he’s expected to forget what he saw? In a culture reckoning with institutional silence, that question hits harder than any tidy answer would.

In the end, Eyes Wide Shut feels newly alive because the world has finally caught up to its anxieties. It’s a film about denial—personal, sexual, social—and about the comfort we take in choosing not to look too closely. Seen today, especially in Criterion’s immaculate 4K presentation, it stands as one of Kubrick’s most haunting achievements: not because it reveals secrets, but because it understands how desperately we want to believe there are none.

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray International Version Edition

Home Video Distributor: Criterion
Available on 4k UHD - November 25, 2025
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Discs: 4K Ultra HD; Blu-ray Disc; three-disc set
Region Encoding: 4K region-free; blu-ray locked to Region A

Stanley Kubrick’s career-capping Eyes Wide Shut unfolds in a dreamscape vision of New York City, where doctor Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), confront the unconscious desires, jealousies, and fears threatening their marriage. A Christmastime odyssey into a surreal sexual underworld whose hidden power structures are laid frighteningly bare, the film marks the fulfillment of the director’s decades-long desire to adapt Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) and the culmination of his obsessive interest in the relationship between institutional authority and the individual. Released in 1999, the film also serves as a fitting coda to a century of cinema, by one of its greatest visionaries—an endlessly tantalizing labyrinth whose myriad symbols, mysteries, and meanings are still being unraveled.

VIDEO

Criterion’s 4K handling is quietly spectacular—the kind of restoration that doesn’t call attention to itself so much as it locks you into the mood. Sourced from the original camera negative and presented with a restrained, film-faithful touch by the Criterion Collection, the image finally has the depth and texture the movie has always suggested: inky blacks that don’t crush detail, skin tones that feel human rather than glossy, and Christmas lights that glow with a slightly sick, seductive warmth.

Grain is intact, motion feels organic, and the film’s dream logic comes through more strongly because nothing looks scrubbed or “modernized.” It’s the rare 4K where the upgrade isn’t about sharpness for its own sake, but about atmosphere—Criterion lets Eyes Wide Shut breathe, making the experience more immersive, more unsettling, and closer than ever to Kubrick’s deliberate, hypnotic intent.

AUDIO

On the audio side, Criterion treats Eyes Wide Shut with the same restraint and intelligence as the visuals. The mix favors space and quiet over punch, which is exactly right for a film that lives in pauses, whispers, and uneasy silences. Jocelyn Pook’s music—those droning strings and ritualistic chants—sounds fuller and more dimensional without ever overwhelming the dialogue, while ambient details (footsteps echoing down hallways, distant city noise, the soft menace of doors closing) feel precisely placed. Dialogue remains clean and intimate, emphasizing how often characters speak around the truth rather than directly to it. It’s not a showy, demo-disc track, but through Criterion Collection’s careful handling, the sound design reinforces the film’s hypnotic unease, pulling you deeper into Kubrick’s controlled, suffocating atmosphere rather than jolting you out of it.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• None

Special Features:

Criterion’s special features lean more toward context and craft than exhaustive archival overload, but they’re thoughtfully curated and genuinely illuminating. The centerpiece supplements focus on Kubrick’s working methods and the film’s long, obsessive production, with interviews and archival material that emphasize how deliberate every choice was—from lighting and blocking to the film’s famously slippery tone. Featurettes like Never Just a Dream frame Eyes Wide Shut as a psychological and formal puzzle rather than a salacious provocation, reinforcing how much of the film’s power lies in what’s withheld. While some longtime fans may note the absence of a few legacy extras from earlier releases, the overall package from the Criterion Collection feels purposeful: it nudges viewers away from conspiracy fixation and toward a deeper appreciation of Kubrick’s design, ambiguity, and control.

• New 4K digital restoration of the international version of the film, supervised and approved by director of photography Larry Smith, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
• New interviews with Smith, set decorator and second-unit director Lisa Leone, and archivist Georgina Orgill
• Archival interview with Christiane Kubrick, director Stanley Kubrick’s wife
• Never Just a Dream (2019), featuring interviews with producer Jan Harlan; Katharina Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter; and Anthony Frewin, Kubrick’s personal assistant
• Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick (2007)
• Kubrick Remembered (2014), featuring interviews with actors Todd Field and Leelee Sobieski and filmmaker Steven Spielberg
• Kubrick’s 1998 acceptance speech for the Directors Guild of America’s D. W. Griffith Award
• Press conference from 1999, featuring Harlan and actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
• Teaser, trailer, and promos
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott and a 1999 interview with filmmaker and actor Sydney Pollack
• New cover based on an original poster by Katharina Kubrick and Christiane Kubrick

	Movie
	Video
	Audio
	Extras
Composite Blu-ray Grade

MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 159 mins
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writer: Stanley Kubrick; Frederic Raphael
Cast: Tom Cruise; Nicole Kidman; Todd Field
Genre: Drama | Thriller
Tagline: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.
Memorable Movie Quote: "The important thing is: we're awake now. And hopefully... for a long time to come."
Theatrical Distributor: Warner Bros.
Official Site: https://www.criterion.com/films/34534-eyes-wide-shut
Release Date: July 16, 1999
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: November 25, 2025.
Synopsis: A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing.