How is suspense created in “The shining”?

In today’s lesson I watched the film “The Shining”. This was the 1980 psychological thriller film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film was about a man called Jack, who takes a new job of looking after a hotel for the winter while it is closed. Jack moves into the hotel with his wife and his son and that is when all the strange behaviour starts to happen. Jack`s psychic son “Danny” sees horrific things of what happens in the hotel. The hotel is haunted and is built on an old Indian burial ground. In the end Jack goes crazy and tries to murder his wife “Wendy” and his son Jack.

Throughout the movie suspense is created in many different ways. The four main ways
that suspense was created by using the four different elements which are; camera, mise en scene, sound and editing. In one of the scenes, Jack violently hammers down the bathroom door with an “axe” trying to get to his wife. This scene creates a lot of suspense’s due to the fact that each time the door is getting hammered we can see Wendy’s reaction to it. This scene creates a lot of tension and keeps the audience glued to the film, due to the fact they know a climax is going to happen soon. The banging on the door is also very effective due to that fact that it makes the audience sit on the edge of their seats and want to know what happens next.

Sound also helps to create tension within the film. It does this by playing airy music in the background throughout the film. Then at key moments it makes the music a lot louder to create the sinister effect. This happens in the end scene were jack is chasing after his son in the outside garden maze. As he gets closer to Danny the music gets louder and the paste of the music increases and becomes much faster.

On a whole I believe that suspense is showed many different times throughout “The shining”. In addition I believe that without suspense being used in the film, it would make the film less effective and make it harder for the target audience to understand. Below is a link for the film, it is a part of the film were I believe that suspense is showed very well.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TVooUHN7j4