While Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick’s highest-grossing film at the box office, its audience reception was abysmal at the time: a baffling D- on CinemaScore. Several factors could be responsible: Kubrick’s unexpected death, six days after he privately screened a supposed final cut of the film, fueled rumors about its actual state of completion, while also raising questions about the record-breaking production shoot, which lasted 400 days. Also, Warner Bros. made the unfortunate decision to market the film exclusively as an erotic thriller, banking on the popularity of leads Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married at the time. While Eyes Wide Shut is provocative, Kubrick’s interpretation unravels like a paranoid fever dream, rejecting traditional narrative structures in favor of an anxiety-inducing humiliation ritual that Dr. Bill Harford (Cruise) experiences overnight.
