Among the best horror films in film history, The Shining directed by stanley kubrick definitely occupies a place.

Many people say that The Shining is special because it not only has horrible segments like other movies, but also makes the audience feel trance. You may even suddenly feel that someone or something is in your room.

A family in sharping.

Why is sharping so horrible? The most intuitive point is the appearance of the hero and heroine, which makes the audience shudder, but apart from many superficial elements, the film has done a lot of processing to create terror.

In this article, let's discuss the difference between The Shining and traditional horror movies, and which method is adopted to make people feel creepy.

Jack, the hero of sharping.

Unusual script creation

In order to answer the above questions, we need to start with sharping's initial creative stage.

Interestingly, when Kubrick planned to make The Shining in Stephen King's novel into a movie, he did not prepare a complete script, but constantly rewrote the first draft during the filming.

Shiny studio photos

Diane Johnson, another screenwriter in The Shining, mentioned in the later documentary "Forgotten Scenery: Sculpture" that when she was writing the script, preparations for the film had already begun. In order to find out the scenes described in Kubrick's script, she even went to the studio to visit the studio herself.

As a result, sharping's script lines and movie ideas came into being simultaneously.

Kubrick's set in The Shining. He is preparing a typewriter to shoot against the draft.

But through the short documentary "Making sharping", we can know that the writing method of the two screenwriters is to understand the film according to the time frame of the whole film and the relationship between different time points.

For example, Kubrick divided The Shining's whole film into 10 parts, each part was marked with a title, and the title at the beginning of each part reflected the theme of the fragment.

Kubrick's studio in The Shining (photo taken from Making Shapin)

But as the film goes on, the time interval gradually increases, from one month later, to every day of the week, and then to the last day at the Peak Hotel.

The increasing passage of time helps to create anxiety and anxiety for the audience. We can realize that the inevitable danger is getting closer and closer, but there is nothing we can do.

The Shining

Besides, we can also observe the difference between The Shining and other horror movies, and the most prominent point is its setting.

From the beginning, the film hinted at the existence of dangers, such as horrible music and long empty shots. But in addition to the hint, the audience is also directly told that the protagonist Jack may hurt his family. We know that he was an alcoholic and hurt Danny, which was conveyed through his wife's lines.

The news that the former hotel security guard suddenly went crazy and hacked his family to death with an axe also directly told the audience that this might just be what the hero Jack would do.

Wendy, sharping's wife.

Through the dialogue at the beginning of the film, we know what happened in the hotel and what Jack did.

Not only that, the supernatural elements in the film are also revealed and revealed early, such as the dialogue between the chef and Danny, which removes most of the potential mysteries in the story.

In other words, Kubrick seems to tell us the final direction of the story at the beginning of the film, which provides us with all reasons to doubt and hate Jack.

The supernatural elements in Shaping are also told to the audience through Danny's contact and dialogue with the black chef.

But the point is, the horror of the story is not whether it happened or not, but how it happened.

Obviously, Kubrick didn't want to make a traditional horror film from the beginning. He raised his goal to a higher level. Movies must be reasonable, without loopholes or lack of motivation, and must be horrible.

This also talks about the reason why sharping scares the audience-weirdness.

Shiny studio photos

Weirdness produces fear.

Before that, we need to know the difference between strangeness and other fears.

In the article "beauty", it is explained that "strangeness comes from anxiety caused by uncertainty about whether something will bring you fear, or from uncertainty about the nature of the danger you face."

There is a vivid example in The Shining. When the heroine went upstairs with a knife, she saw two men, one of whom was wearing a bear uniform and a mask. We are not sure whether they pose a threat to mankind, and their intentions are vague and cannot be confirmed.

"Bear" and "sharping Man" also hint at the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Similarly, Danny rode a children's tricycle back and forth in the hotel corridor and suddenly met a pair of twin girls.

When they first appeared, they were at a distance where it was difficult to see their faces clearly, but as the camera zoomed in, the audience would find that they were expressionless, as if they wanted something from the character. This unusually calm state, as well as the expression on his face that showed no information, implied the uncertainty of threats, which directly triggered the deep fear and anxiety of the audience.

Danny meets twin girls in The Shining.

As the camera zooms in, we can see the detailed faces of twin girls.

The previous explanation of strangeness can also be explained by a real-world example.

If you are walking in the street of the city at night and suddenly hear something moving in the alley next to you, your first reaction must be that someone or something wants to hurt you.

Therefore, from the perspective of evolution, when human beings are in an uncertain environment, they will spontaneously assume that they are in danger, which is also the stress instinct of human beings.

Alleys in the dark

There are several ways to trigger this primitive instinct in sharping's films.

First of all, the soundtrack of the film is an uneasy and unpredictable style. Sometimes the concert suddenly rings when nothing happens, and sometimes there is no response when something happens.

For example, when Danny was playing darts, he suddenly saw a pair of twin girls behind him, but he didn't have the music to create an atmosphere like other horror movies.

This passage has no soundtrack but a low decibel sound effect. If you watch sharping on the computer, it's hard to hear without turning up the volume.

The uncertainty of the music logic sends a signal to the audience to be vigilant at all times, which is exactly the same as what we said above: when you hear something in an alley, you will feel that there may be danger.

But sharping looks very safe visually. The hotel is brightly lit, brightly lit, and it is not the old horror movie environment at all. This invisibly adds more anxiety, and the hotel hides the horror under the surface, just like wearing a mask.

The shining space is bright as a whole.

This weird scene filled the whole movie, and the strongest scene was when Danny was playing with toys, a ball suddenly rolled towards him. When Danny looked up, we only saw an empty corridor in the next shot.

Rolling a ball is not scary, but it increases the anxiety and discomfort of the audience. We may think: Who threw the ball? What does he want?

The Shining

Later, when Danny was walking along the corridor, he found that Room 237 was opened. Although he was warned not to go near the room, it was neither dark nor ominous, but full of light and warmth.

The conflict between the two indicates potential danger, but it does not reveal obvious threat, which makes people feel at a loss.

Room 237 that Danny saw in The Shining.

But the disadvantage of this style is that sharping is not so terrible in the end, or it has become another kind of terrible.

As the film shows the hearts and intentions of more and more hotels and their guests, the nature of danger has gradually surfaced. When Jack made up his mind to kill his family, the situation became obvious.

So at the end of the film, the story can be simply summarized as a madman with an axe to kill his family. In this way, strangeness was replaced by nervousness, and the plot brought about by the conflict made sharping surpass ordinary horror movies, and finally created those classic plots that spread in the history of movies.

Sharping people (1980)

The Shining well explained how the film entered and manipulated the audience's psychology. Director Kubrick and screenwriter Diane Johnson tell us that the most effective fear comes from the audience's own imagination, not the ghosts on the screen.

Kubrick tells a seemingly simple story, showing us how a masterpiece arouses the most primitive fears of human beings. As he himself said in an interview, "This is just a story of a man who goes crazy quietly with his family."

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