Hello and welcome back to Everything but Bone. Today we are going back to 1980 with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a classic film that has recently spawned countless memes and reactions gifs. But I want to look at The Shining as a great (and maybe even the best) example of ambiguity and building atmosphere in horror.
When I’m talking about ambiguity in horror, I mean the idea that some things left unexplained and up the audience’s imagination. There is good ambiguity and there is bad ambiguity. Good ambiguity isn’t knowing if Childs has been Thing’ed or not at the end of The Thing (1982), and if the bottle he drinks from is full of gasoline or booze. Bad ambiguity is watching a film wondering why the fuck am I watching this mess?
The Shining is definitely the former. I’m gonna talk about the elephant in the room immediately, the 1980 film is way better than the book. If you’re reading this Stephen King, I apologize but it’s true. While the novel goes in-depth at building the lore of the Overlook Hotel, the horror of the story gets better when you don’t exactly know all the details about the ghosts and the other strange happenings. The audience, like the Torrance family, gets to experience the unknown as well.
Since this is a column talking about visual storytelling, I have to say that Jack wielding a fire ax looks way better than him trying to beat his family to death with a roque mallet like in the book. Just try picturing Jack Nicholson running around the Overlook with a giant hammer. Bad, right? It’s too funny to actually be scary.
I felt a little daunted at the idea of writing about The Shining. It is one of the most analyzed horror films of all time. Ask anyone about it and they’re gonna tell you how Kubrick put in all these hidden meanings in the film. So I’m just going to stick with how the element of horror is portrayed to viewers.
First off, we have to talk about the cinematography. The film stripped down to just a collection of images is beautiful to watch. The film opens with a lengthy overhead establishing shot of the Colorado scenery. Without a single line of dialogue, the audience gets their first hint of danger when they realize the isolation of the hotel.
And considering isolation, Kubrick’s trademark one point perspective framing is everywhere here. (A terrible drinking game, by the way.) One character (Grady sisters exempted) is alone at the apex of the shot. The precise way this angle looks on film isn’t common to real life. Kubrick’s Shining is a character driven horror film in which the hotel, and how its filmed as an entity onto itself, is a character as well. The perspective shots give the hotel an otherworldly feel.
Speaking of characters, during my rewatch I noticed that our director often has characters first react to a horror they see before then showing the audience what that horror is. It’s a clever way to get viewers unsettled before a reveal. This is done most often with Wendy Torrance; poor Shelley Duvall’s face is perfect at expressing fear. Consider the moment when she finds what her husband has really been typing.
Filmed from a dutch angle, Wendy’s expression of growing terror sets the audience on edge before we even see “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Like the previous example I wrote about for It Follows, Kubrick uses longer takes with the steady cam on a dolly to trap the audience in with the character. When we follow Danny around the hotel on his big wheels, or when Jack goes into room 237, the longer takes racket up the tension. We wait for the camera to cut away, but it doesn’t. We are just waiting for something to go wrong like the characters.
The ending of the film will forever be ambiguous, but the sudden shot of Jack dead and frozen is always a jolt to see. Sure, it’s simple and pretty obvious what’s happened to him. But I think it’s better than slowly watching him die on screen, and after watching him torture his family for two hours, kind of a relief.
Before I wrap up this article, I gotta say one last thing, I want you all to go back and rewatch The Shining. Pay close attention to the ghosts. They never blink on camera. The longer I looked at Lloyd and Grady expecting (or wanting) them to blink, the more frightening I found them. Blinking is such a passive human act, but when it’s not there the uncanny valley gets a little deeper. Not blinking is such a simple thing to have an actor do, but it’s creepier than most special effects.
Horror aficionados will be writing about The Shining until the sun dies out. I could write and write about this film until I go nuts like Jack Torrance. But I hope you all have a renewed appreciation for this beautiful classic and for how it executes its thrills. I’m grateful that image macros and gifs of the elevator overflowing with blood have cemented its memetic status in pop culture. I have visited the park in Colorado were the hotel that inspired the Overlook is located. I didn’t go inside, probably for the best. I don’t want to be the new caretaker.
