The Shining analysis

The scene that made me the most uneasy in this film was the scene with the two little girls. At the start of the scene, Danny is riding a tricycle. It is an extreme long shot so it makes Danny look very far away. It is also a tracking forward shot and it makes it seem like Danny is being followed. The shot lingers on the same corridor after Danny has left the frame for about 4 seconds. The corridor itself remain empty for those seconds, paired with the high pitched music is creates a sense of anticipation.

There is then a cut to then next corridor, It is still a tracking shot yet now it is closer to Danny as we follow him round a corner. The tracking stops as soon as he stops on his tricycle and at the end of the hallway are two twin girls. This corridor is much smaller than the last corridor and even though it is a long shot it still feels claustrophobic due to the narrowness of the corridor and the fact that there are no shots of the outside world. There is a switch between a close up of Danny's face and the corridor with the twin girls. The girls then say "Come play with us, Danny". In any other situation or genre this would not be scary but here it is effectively creepy. Children are a very widely used convention of the horror genre. For example in particularly chilling scene in the zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, it is the child that becomes the zombie and kills her father. I think children are used as they are often seen as innocent and when they are not it can be terrifying because of the contrast. Also people are a lot less likely to defend themselves against children when attacked by them.

In this particular section of the scene there is no eye line match editing which would be expected of this type of scene. We never see the hallway without Danny in the frame and it is as if the person who was following Danny then went on to watch the scene happening and you are seeing it from their point of view.

There is then a cut to the exact same hallway yet the two girls are laying there on the floor covered in their own blood with an axe next to them. The image of the girls bodies itself is shocking and with it being such a quick cut from that hallway to this version of the same frame accompanied with the sharp high music it made me jump.The axe is significant as it is what Jack later uses to break through the doors and to kill Mr Holloway. It is in a way foreshadowing to what may happen in future scenes. Blood is another convention of the horror genre. This is a big fear for some people with others feeling faint at the sight of it and as horror films play with some of the biggest fears of ordinary people it is present in most films. Like The Shining, My Bloody Valentine uses blood to show brutality and a gruesome murder. While in this film the blood is sprayed upon the walls in My Bloody Valentine the murderer of a young girl uses it to write a sinister message on a wall above her body. Blood is used a lot in this film as a sign of danger, such as in the scene where there is literally a river of blood down a corridor.

There is a switch between the shot of the young girls massacred on the floor and them holding hands. They repeat the phrase “For ever” over and each time it is said the shot of their bodies on the floor is shown and then a cut to them holding hands. The shot gets closer to their faces each time they say it. These sharp cuts between each shot are used to make the audience on edge and fearful of what is going to happen next. 

Another scene that makes me hide my eyes was when Jack was using the axe to break down the door to the bathroom where Wendy and Danny were hiding. This scene is many of the same themes as the scene with Danny in the hallway, for example the axe is the same. Weapons such as knifes, axes, chainsaws and machetes are a convention of the horror genre as they are often seen as leading to violent deaths and show the most goriest details. They also do the most damage to the human body and make the victim less likely to survive the attack. For example in Friday the thirteenth, Jason uses a machete for most of his kills.

Like the scene with the twin girls innocent and childish phrases are used to create a chilling atmosphere which leaves the audience in anticipation for what is about to happen. For example he says “come out, come out wherever you are”. This phrase is used when children play hide and seek and it is used in this context to scare both the audience and Wendy.He says some lines from the three little pig’s tale; he says “little pigs little pigs let me come in”. The way that Jack calls them the pigs and speaks from the wolf’s point of view is like they are the prey and Jack is the predator. Also with them being called pigs it’s almost like the bathroom is a pen or enclosure and they are waiting in there to be slaughtered.

Inside of the bathroom, Wendy is cowering in the corner against a white tiled wall. This is a Mid-shot to allow the axe coming through the door to be seen in the same frame as her screaming. Screaming is another convention of the horror genre and it is often the women who do it. Screaming is often used to get people attention when they are in trouble and it usually frightens us when the screams would not be heard. The tag line for the film Alien was “In space no-one can hear you scream”. In this film it is frightening because they are so isolated just like Wendy and Danny are in the Shining.