The Shining is a very influential psychological horror film by Stanley Kubrick containing one of the most infamous improvised lines in the history of film, “Here’s Johnny!” The most significant visual element of the film is its sophisticated set design. Kubrick knew he was making a horror film yet avoided the stereotypical bleak, unclean and cramped scenery because it is too much of a simplistic notion. He presents the Overlook Hotel as a prestigious, classy and spacious space which we are acquainted with in the scenes with Danny riding his big wheel on the eccentrically coloured carpets. “Instead of the cramped darkness and panicky quick editing of the standard-issue scary movie, Kubrick gives us the eerie, colossal, brilliantly lit spaces of the Overlook Hotel (created in Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire), shot with amplitude and calm. It looks like an abandoned city, or the state rooms of the Titanic, miraculously undamaged at the bottom of the ocean.” (Bradshaw 2012).By Kubrick doing this he introduces the audience to a new type of scary, one that instead of jumping out and screaming in your face, smiles reassuringly at you waiting for you to let your guard down.

In this film Kubrick also uses a lot of his favoured isolated corridor shots where something/one is usually centred in a shot that contains a continuous depth to it. This is evidence of him utilizing the space on the screen to advocate the notion of loneliness and remoteness which is a befitting technique to use on this film as the remoteness of the location is key to its fright factor. “The scene opens with an extreme long shot tracking Danny as he rides his tricycle away from the camera, down a hallway in the Overlook… Kubrick holds this shot for another few seconds, suggesting that Danny has just entered a dangerous place to where the camera is afraid to follow.” (Polselli, 2008) These camera shots really do alot in terms of visually talking to the audience, they show us that Danny and family are all alone so if there is a threat in their midst it must be closer to them than they could have ever imagined.

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The film could not have done so well with these shots alone. The sound design adds to this eerie theme perfectly. A prime example of the sound design is i the scene where Danny is riding his big wheel and the audio consists of nothing but a variation of Danny’s big wheel rolling on the wooden floor then on the carpet, then on the wooden floor again. The absence of music in these scenes really adds to the emptiness of the hotel and acts as a form of building tension. “Even more chilling is the sound design, a deeply unsettling contrast of dead silence and piercing noise.”(Clark 2012)

Bibliography

Peter Bradshaw 2012– Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/01/the-shining-review

Ashley Clark 2012 – Available at: http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/the-shining-22374

Fig 1 – Available at: http://moarpowah.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/the-shining-original.jpg

Fig 2 – Available at: http://www.tboake.com/443_shining_f09.html

Fig 3 – Available at: http://dailymischief.com/the-shining-my-favorite-movie/