The Shining

Today we watch a film called “The shining” which is a thriller starring Jack Nicholson. The story is about a man who is the janitor that is taking care of the hotel during the winter times when no people come to the hotel, which he takes his family along with him to the hotel. The janitor slowly becomes insane and tries to kill him wife and child as they try to escape from his madness but are unable to leave the hotel because there is snow everywhere outside making it impossible to travel. The film has constant suspense throughout the movie from the very start of the movie to the very end, never allowing the audience to get bored. We as the audience can already predict that the there is going to be trouble due the setting and the way the camera follows the car. The camera is at a birds eye view following the car into the cliffs as if the camera was following them like eagle stalking its prey as it focuses on its target. In my opinion, I think that this is a key signifier to all the bad things to come for the family as they travel of into the silent cliffs.

During our lesson we was given a hand out and had to note suspenseful scenes within the film. A great scene that shows suspense in my opinion would have to be the one when the child is on the tricycle and peddling through the wall way and as he goes over the carpet the sound goes low then high again as he goes over the wood. This builds on the suspense to aid the suspense further the camera tracks the boy around the corners of the hotel to leave the audience waiting in fright of what is around the corner. The boy drives around corner after corner, each time nothing there till he reaches a corner and he passes room 237. He slowly turns his head and looks at the door then slowly approaching the door and lifts his hand towards the door and slowly twists the door handle as the camera zooms in on the boy’s hand. The zoom and slowness is a great way to build suspense, and to get the audience heart pounding and wondering what is on the other side of the door at the same time the audience doesn’t want to know what it is, because it could be something very scary or bad. The different camera angles, shot types and music all build great suspense in a film which this film has a large amount of.