 Crafting a great horror film is creating a balance between tension, atmosphere, and mystery. It's very rare when any movie is able to utilize all of these elements to help tell its story. The shining's ability to create horror and psychologically resonate with the audience is unrivaled, but it doesn't stop at just being a great horror film. Because outside of the element of horror, the movie is one that creates a discussion. There's an ambiguity that is found within every scene and down every hall of the overall hotel that is begging for further inspection. Because of that, the amount of discussion surrounding the film is unparalleled. There have been countless articles, videos, and even books written about the film. The mass majority is focusing on different meanings that the film is hiding. Rather than adding to that area of discussion, today I want to focus on the five techniques that Stanley Kubrick, along with all of his collaborators, used to create the greatest horror film of all time. You know that something is building up in this place, it's holding back this extraordinarily emotional, powerful, dramatic punch that's going to happen. You know it's going to come somehow, at some time, and it just creates such suspense. Of the utmost importance to the shining is the inevitability, knowing that something is going to happen. The film never tries to hide the fact that Jack is dangerous. Within minutes of the opening of the film, we're told of his previous wrongs. On this particular occasion, we just used too much strength and he injured Danny's arm. We're also told that isolation for long periods of time can cause people to go insane and on a homicidal spree. He must have suffered some kind of a complete mental breakdown. He ran a muck and killed his family with an axe. Moreover, after Danny learns that they'll be going to the hotel, he blacks out. Even before we arrive at the hotel, we know that it is dangerous, and once the family arrives at the hotel, things don't get better. Throughout the movie, Kubrick uses visual hints to suggest the imminent danger, hints like knives being placed directly above Danny, here and here. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Jack stops spending time with Wendy and Danny altogether, leading to his insanity. He chooses to do everything alone, and whenever one of them reaches out to him, Kubrick again shows us off visually. Once they reach the hotel, it's rare to see Wendy and Jack in the same frame. Kubrick creates isolation by keeping them apart, and even when they're in conversation together, it's rare to see them together, and on those rare occasions, one is in the foreground whereas another is in afterthought in the background. As Jack descends into insanity, he is doing it alone. We can see it whereas Wendy and Danny cannot. Kubrick uses dramatic irony or the audience knowing something the characters don't to create horror through inevitability. In addition to being cut off from one another, the family is also cut off from the outside world. We know that they are going to have to face Jack and won't get help from anybody else. Through this inevitability comes tension. After an information overload in the first 30 minutes of the movie where we were introduced to the characters and learned what the central conflict will be, the movie seems to pull back. The family arrives at the Overlook Hotel, and we spend 20 minutes just watching the family, seeing their daily lives and as aforementioned, watching Jack distance himself from his wife and son. During these segments we follow the three family members around most of the time with a Steadycam, at the time of its release a relatively new tool for filmmakers. The camera, which is often low to the ground, seems to glide around, and has a mind of its own, giving the audience the feeling that something is always watching, like the hotel is alive. The movie takes a long time before anything substantial happens. In fact, it's about 45 minutes into the movie before conflict starts to build, and an hour and 45 minutes into the movie before Jack goes crazy and starts trying to attack his family. Last week in my video about the Twilight Zone, I spoke about tension and how the longer it takes for tension to be built, the more effective that tension becomes. And from the very start, this movie effectively creates tension that lasts until the very end. Part of what makes this film so great is that it's a collaborative effort. Everyone came together to ensure that every aspect of the movie is able to achieve its purpose. The original music tracks composed by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind are a perfect example of this. These tracks were composed for an analog synthesizer keyboard, as the main instrument, creating an unnatural feel. The main theme, which is based off a dream of a witch's Sabbath from Symphony Fantastique by Hector Berlioz in a traditional requerim Dias Irae, uses a low melody that resembles a combination of tubas, trombones, and French horns, which create the dark foreboding, ominous feel that can be found from the very opening scene. We're looking at what should be a beautiful mountain scape overlooking a lake, but the music tells us something is wrong. In throughout the entire movie, Kubrick and music editor Gordon Stainforth used the haunting soundtrack to make what looks normal and calm feel eerie and foreboding, but it doesn't stop there. There are a number of abrupt and shrill shrieks in the music like this. These alone put us on edge with the idea that an attack can come from nowhere. They're also used to intensify a scene. During the iconic bathroom scene, for example, when Wendy yells, the music does the same, making the screen feel much more dramatic. In addition, the soundtrack has human voices mixed in. Some are chanting, some are screaming in torment, reminding us that the world of the film is alive and full of evil. Another part of the soundtrack is this low and ominous hum that plays in the background of several vital scenes. It represents the physical effect of the shining, that is the magical ability. Whenever we are hearing it, we are seeing the horrors that come from the shining, but it achieves a lot more. It actually comes from David Lynch's Eraserhead. A film Kubrick called his personal favorite movie. In Eraserhead, this is used to separate reality and fantasy, to show us that we are part of a nightmare. It's used in a similar way in the shining, but the constant dark undertones also help to put the audience in a mindset that will disturb them. One of the most effective elements of the film is how eerie it is. This eeriness is great in a lot of different ways. One of Kubrick's favorites was moving furniture around. Oftentimes chairs are misplaced to move around from scene to scene, and sometimes small subtle changes are made within that scene. This shows us that the hotel is alive. It's haunted by something and even though its effects are subtle, they can be found within every scene. He did something similar with Jack's typewriter, making it go from this to this. But this eeriness doesn't stop there. There are a number of small editing errors, like this car that disappears with just a simple cut. These simple cuts are used to great effect throughout the entire movie. It shows off the torment that Danny is facing, or just cuts to different parts of the hotel to show that it is alive. Another transition that is used quite a bit throughout the movie are cross dissolves or superimposing images. Throughout the film we watch as Jack seems to melt into the hotel, as he is consumed by the evil of it. It is also used to infuse Jack and Danny together. Oftentimes before Danny sees anything supernatural, we see a cross dissolve going from Jack to Danny linking their stores together and linking Jack to the torment that Danny faces. This can be interpreted any number of ways however, which brings me to my fifth and most important area of discussion. Throughout the movie we are never given a definitive answer to anything. We're never told what the shining is other than a way to communicate. We're never told when Jack finally snaps. We're never told how much he hallucinates and how much is real. In fact, we're never even definitively told that the hotel is really magical. There are so many questions surrounding the film that it hides its true message about an abusive relationship and the impact that has on everybody involved. One of my favorite readings is that everything we're seeing, all the magic, the ghosts and everything else, is Danny simply trying to rationalize his abusive father. Another major idea is history repeating itself, how the genocides of the past that the film references are still felt in the present, and that the violence just manifests itself into other areas. This idea is supported with the end of the movie, despite a positive ending where the heroes live and the bad person dies, it feels so unsatisfying. We don't know if they're going to make it down from the mountain and we don't know what will happen next or how they will be traumatized in the future by the past. The story may have finished, but they still have their lives to live, futures that will be haunted by the past, the same as the hotel. This movie succeeds because it doesn't tell us everything we want or need to know to understand it. A lot is left open to interpretation, even though it's one of the most discussed and studied films of all time, it remains a movie full of mystery. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed. I love The Shining so much, it was one of the first movies that really made me appreciate filmmaking, and even though I've seen it over a dozen times now, I'm always finding new details that add to the horror of the film. This is one of those movies that I've wanted to cover for so long and I'm so glad I could finally make this video. So in preparation for it, I ended up reading a lot of different articles, interviews, books, and a ton of other resources. I've put links to just about all of them that I consumed over the past month or so in the description. I would highly recommend checking some of them out, and if you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit that subscribe button to check out my other videos. I put links to my last video on the Twilight Zone, my previous discussion of Eraserhead. Thanks for watching, and I will see you next week when we finish up Horror Month.