A good horror movie doesn't just scare you, it also plays tricks on your subconscious, so that you can't stop just thinking about it.
It is said that most people can only see pictures in their dreams and rarely see words. Dreams represent the subconscious mind. Therefore, most of the human subconscious is composed of pictures.
And Kubrick is precisely the master of using pictures. The pictures in "The Shining" use a lot of metaphors. When fans watch it, it is like entering a hypnotic hypnosis. The rich elements of fear in the picture are unconsciously Implanted in the depths of the fans' consciousness.
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How scary are these characters?
The story begins with Jack (father) applying for a job as an administrator at a resort hotel.
Mother (Wendy) and son (Danny) have breakfast together at home.
Although Jack is well-dressed and his hair is crisp, he always exudes an unpleasant aura.
Is there any wood?
why?
Kubrick used the camera to describe such a father: raised eyebrows, pointed nose, gloomy smile - these are similar to the devil in Western culture:
This characteristic becomes more apparent when the story is halfway through and Jack nearly collapses due to the claustrophobia and the pressure of writing.
His raised eyebrows are in the same shape as the devil's goat horns - goat horns are weapons for goats to fight, and in the image of the devil, like fangs, they imply aggression.
In addition, Jack's gloomy expression is presented in an inverted triangle composition, which is top-heavy like the inverted pentagram in Western culture.
The pentagram is the symbol of Venus in Greek mythology, which means love and beauty. The inverted pentagram symbolizes the subversion of love and beauty.
In the second half of "The Shining", there are more and more such expressions, and Jack also changed from caring about children to wanting to kill his family.
Demons also connote sex and promiscuity in Western culture.
In the film, after the demonized Jack opens room 237, which should not be opened, what he sees is a naked woman who is taking a bath.
So, Jack once again showed a devilish smile and kissed the naked girl.
Children's shoes who are curious about the plot after the kiss can go to the movies by themselves.
The image of Mother Wendy is also full of metaphors. She was slender, pale, and had very large eyes.
Is it very similar to the fairy in Western legends (ELF)?
Elves are a relatively weak race in Western legends - people have heard of knights defeating dragons, but they have never heard of elves defeating demons.
When the child was chased and killed by her husband, the mother showed panic and powerlessness, just like the weakness of the elves.
"Only work, not play, Jack becomes a fool." This is a line of words that Jack repeatedly typed on the paper in the claustrophobic hotel before he had the idea of killing.
At this time, Jack has collapsed.
However, what prompted Jack to make up his mind to kill were the two phantom characters he saw after his collapse. One is the wine Paul Ede, and the other is the former winter caretaker Grady—he became claustrophobic because of the snow-covered mountains, chopped up his children and his wife to pieces, and then shot himself—the hotel manager told Jack when he was applying for a job. The story of Jack is a reminder for Jack, but a prophecy for the audience.
Danny (the child) dislocated his joints, and Wendy mistakenly thought it was Jack who had roughed Danny again (Jack had pulled Tony because of his anger), crying and accusing Jack. Jack was very angry, ran into the empty banquet hall, and said to the bar——
A "miracle" happened. Soul-exchangeable wine (indulgence and depravity) and wine Paul Eid suddenly appeared in front of Jack.
Although his face is kind, he is also full of strangeness. Compared with other characters in the film, Lloyd's skin is abnormally grayish blue, like a dead person.
If the soul is exchanged for alcohol, it must be the devil who takes the soul. In Western culture, there is a famous devil, that is, Mephistopheles, who seduced Faust into depravity. Goethe described Mephistopheles in this way: He was calm, harmonious, witty, "a man who did good for the sake of great evil."
The expression and image of the wine Paul Ide fully conform to Mephisto's description of calm, witty, and witty, while the facial features of the hook nose and pointed ears conform to the standard setting of Western demons.
Compared to the wine Paul Ede, the image of the former winter guard Greedy is extraordinarily upright and firm.
This seemingly righteous administrator once made a crazy move to kill the whole family.
Jack spilled Greedy's wine, and Greedy kindly took Jack to the bathroom to clean up his clothes. During the conversation, Greedy strengthened Jack's hatred for his wife and children, and encouraged Jack to "correct them".
God may not always give life a smooth path, but the devil is always kind.
The Bible does have these words: "Those are false apostles, deceitful men, pretending to be the apostles of Christ. It's no wonder. For even Satan pretends to be an angel of light."
In addition to the phantom characters that Jack saw, Tony, who had the ability to "Shining", also saw many phantoms. The most important pair of phantom characters were the two daughters killed by the former guard Grady.
Grady's two daughters, an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, flashed by, and it was difficult to see the difference in height and appearance between the two girls.
Kubrick seems to have deliberately disguised the two girls as twins. Why did he do this?
There is neither the same leaf nor the same person in the world. Differences are the basis for human beings to confirm their existence. Therefore, if they suddenly see another existence that is exactly the same as themselves, people will instinctively feel fear and want to confirm the existence of the other party. Is it an illusion, or is it real?
The strange feeling brought by twins is based on this kind of psychology. Also based on this psychology, in many horror films, mirrors are often a necessary horror element.
Danny and Tony are another pair of hidden twins in "The Shining" - before the Jack family is ready to check into the hotel, Danny and Tony talk in front of the mirror and say they don't want to go to that hotel - Kubrick through the visual twin The display continues to provoke the deep fear in people's hearts.
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Why are these scenes so scary?
To create psychological fear, environmental factors are also important.
The picture below is from the first set of pictures in the whole film: a yellow car is running on the road in the endless mountains.
This group of pictures was shot by helicopter, and the shaking lens sometimes overlaps two pictures, forming a strong sense of unrealism. The low horn in the background music suggested that the end of the trip would be extremely dangerous.
The same wobbly long shot is also used for Danny riding his bike in the hotel - the bike ends in room 237, where the former winter manager Grady has piled up his wife and daughter after dismembering them.
The end point of Danny's bicycle ride in the hotel (small scene) is the murder room 237, echoing the opening scene of Jack driving between the mountains (big scene), and the end point is the hotel on the top of the haunted house.
The horrific music made by the opening horn seems to be ringing in the monotonous sound of Danny's bicycle ride - the horror of one scene is superimposed on another.
In The Shining, the image of blood in the elevator room appears four times.
For the first time, "Tony" warns Danny that the Hilltop Hotel is a dangerous place. Blood poured out and pushed the chair forward several centimeters.
The second time, Jack and Wendy had a big fight and were about to be tempted by the devil to kill his wife and children. This terrifying picture reappeared, the blood surge was stronger, and the chair almost overturned.
The third time, Jack was completely bewitched by the demon and yelled at his wife, trying to "correct (kill)" her. Danny saw the blood rush, completely reddening his entire field of vision. Appearing at the same time as this picture is the mirror word REDRUM (red wine) of English MURDER (murder).
The last occurrence of this scene is not seen by Danny through "The Shining" (the ability to predict), but Wendy and Wendy see a scene in a series of visions in a mountaintop hotel after being chased by her husband with an axe.
The shocking images of the river of blood appear repeatedly, telling Danny that the danger is getting closer each time, and it is also continuing to strengthen the fear of fans. And when Wendy, an ordinary person without Shining ability, could see this picture, the original illusion became a reality, Jack's crazy thoughts completely controlled his behavior, and the crazy banquet at the Peak Hotel also reached its peak.
In the horror movie "The Shining", Kubrick used space, color, and light to create a lot of uncomfortable horror images.
Such as Jack's expressionless typing shot in the room:
The image of the crown of thorns formed by the three chandeliers seemed to keep Jack forever at the desk. Empty hotel lobbies and dim lighting contribute to the depressing atmosphere.
For another example, the Indian geometric patterns repeated many times throughout the film, in addition to echoing the horror element that the mountaintop hotel was originally an Indian cemetery, is more important to continue to create sensory discomfort-repetitive patterns often appear. In hypnotic pictures, the experience is unreal and vertigo.
Such single-scene metaphors abound in The Shining.
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The story in the story is even scarier! ?
The Shining uses a Russian nesting doll-like narrative — a story within a story, with plot as a metaphor for plot.
The place where the story of "The Shining" takes place - the hotel on the top of the mountain itself has a story: in the pre-colonial era, a caravan caravan called the Doner Organization was trapped in the mountains by heavy snow, and they killed each other and devoured their companions for a living; in the post-colonial era , The Hilltop Inn was built on the cemetery of the original Indians.
At the beginning of the story, when Danny asked why the Dona group killed each other, Jack smiled and replied:
In Jack's mind, it's okay to kill to survive.
To the second half of "The Shining" -
Due to the claustrophobic feeling of the snow-covered mountains and the loneliness of writing itself, Jack went mad and wanted to kill his family on the grounds that his family never cared about his future and responsibilities.
As long as you can protect yourself by killing other lives, even your family can kill.
Is this attitude towards life the same as the attitude towards the killing of each other by the Dona organization? Which of these two things is more terrifying?
It is this surprisingly consistent attitude that integrates the short story at the beginning of the film with The Shining's main story.
Even a single line, Kubrick can fit into a fairy tale as a metaphor for the big plot.
For example, wife Wendy, who had just arrived at the Hilltop Hotel, exclaimed while visiting the kitchen:
The line to mark with bread crumbs comes from "Candy House" in the Grimm's Fairy Tales. It tells the story of a brother and sister who got lost in the forest and failed to escape by throwing bread crumbs to mark them.
Sprinkling bread crumbs originally had two meanings: 1. Failed to escape by marking in complex terrain; 2. There are terrorist forces behind the escape process.
The brother and sister learned to be smart later, and they walked out of the forest with stones as markers.
Here comes the third moral, and this one is for the film: Wendy and Danny can finally escape, but with an upgrade.
Coincidentally, the mountaintop hotel in The Shining also has a maze of trees. At the end of the film, Danny hides in this maze to avoid Jack's pursuit.
By wiping the footprints and imitating the footprints, Danny successfully escaped Jack's pursuit and escaped the maze following the correct footprints. And Jack was limited by the wrong clues, and finally froze to death in the maze, completely calm.
Losing in a maze of trees is strikingly similar to being lost in a forest, and breadcrumbs and disorienting footprints have the same quality on false clues.
Character images, scene images, and the Russian nesting doll-like narrative method are the three main metaphorical ways Kubrick tells the story of "The Shining". According to Kubrick, this is a set of punches, which directly bombed the audience's subconscious, and formed multiple metaphors at this time (it doesn't matter if you don't understand this, as long as you know, it will be more terrifying, because after thinking about it, it's okay. Characters, pondering the picture, pondering the picture, pondering the plot, pondering the plot, and pondering the characters, is there any?)
For example: the labyrinth also connotes delusional illusions. Jack was trapped in the labyrinth and died, as if he was bewitched by the demon of the hilltop hotel - lost in the fantasy that his wife and son are all obstacles to his career. And Danny escaped from the maze, which is a metaphor for the child resisting the illusion of staying in the mountaintop hotel and finally escape.
Yes, finally escaped! ! ! Seeing this, have you escaped too?
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