Melanie Jimenez
Film Studies
11/15/2018
The Shining Blog
The Shining (1980) is a horror suspense film that takes place at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) was hired as the winter caretaker of the hotel while it is closed for the season. He took it as an opportunity to cure his writer’s block and brought his wife Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (played by Danny LLoyd) to live in the hotel for the winter. The movie takes a turn of events when Danny began to experience disturbing paranormal psychic visions, and Jack learns the dark secrets of a previous murder from the last winter caretaker. This causes Jack to unravel into a homicidal maniac who hunts against his own family! Danny having these visions causes him to know ahead of time. The film proceeds to follow Danny and Wendy as they escape their maniac of a father/husband and the effects of suspense throughout the film causes audience to be on edge on what will happen next!
The film shows different elements that help build the suspense of the film. The use of non-diegetic sounds is popular in horror films for having viewers at the edge of their seats waiting to see what’s going to happen. Non-diegetic sounds are known as outside sounds in the film that the characters wouldn’t necessarily hear- their main purpose is to have the audience wonder what the plot is and when is it going to come. Director Stanley Kubrick was big on using sound as an element of building suspense throughout The Shining. For example, viewers can relate to the suspense they felt when Danny was running away from Jack in the maze outside of the hotel. It’s as if I felt my heart come out of my chest from being so scared that Jack would find Danny, and the film would end in the family dying. I can honestly say that the dramatic emphasis created by music playing in the background made my anticipation rise as this scene played out. Every corner Danny took threw me off edge, wondering if Jack will the there ready to murder him. The horrific music in the background puts viewers at the edge of their seats in anticipation as to what will happen next.
Another way suspense is shown could be the psychic visions that the family has throughout the film. As mentioned before, as the film progresses we notice that Danny experiences these “supernatural”, crazy visions. Viewers may come to conclusion that he had schizophrenia, the mental disorder of having hallucinations that control a person’s ability to think clearly. These hallucinations that Danny had also gave off suspense to people watching. These visions were weird and seemed to have nothing to do with the plot of the film as it progressed. Nothing made sense through Danny’s visions; until Jack goes through his psychotic phases.
Jack begins to go crazy due to the isolation of the hotel and gets similar visions to Danny. Things began to connect when I found out that the previous caretaker of the hotel, a man referred to as Grady, had killed his family, his wife and twin daughters. It clicked for me that the twin girls that Danny kept envisioning throughout the film were the daughters of the previous caretaker. I believe that this was a smart way of building suspense because it made me question, “What does this mean? What does this have to do with anything?”
These visions are a cause of confusion and lead to questions which add to the suspense of what these things do to connect to the big plot twists. Jack’s vision also bring the same questions when he was “talking to” a butler of the Overlook Hotel in the bright red bathroom. Who is this he’s talking to? Is he real or just all in Jack’s head? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?.. It turns out that this man that he was “conversating with” was a figment of Jack’s imagination. He envisioned the previous caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. This “conversation” could be looked at as Jack’s motive to go on a psychotic downfall and attempt to kill his family.
Although these visions or hallucinations were very confusing and led to many questions both answered and left unanswered throughout the entire film, they all had some sort of connection as to what will happen next. These scenes, along with others that were similar, helped build suspense throughout the film. Even though I am not a big fan horror movies, I really enjoyed this movie because it wasn’t “scary” in a conventional sense, and it always kept me on the edge of my seat, not knowing what to expect. I believe director Kubrick did a great job on displaying suspense throughout the film to help lead up to the plot.
REFERENCES
The Shining. Dir Stanley Kubrick
Feat: Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance)
Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrance)
Danny Lloyd (Danny)
Scatman Crothers (Dick Holloran)
Warner Brothers, 1980
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