Happy Halloween From B2W

The Shining is one of my favourite movies of all time. You may have noticed my fab poster in the background of my Zooms, livestreams and selfies (below).

One of the reasons it is one of my favourites is because it was part of my own writing journey. I first watched the movie when I was a teenager. I was a strange kid who loved to watch things over and over in a loop. In doing so, I realised there were a variety of ‘giveaways’ of what would happen in the story.

I was confused at first. Why would Kubrick and his co-writer Diane Johnson essentially tell us what would happen next?? I didn’t know it yet, but my intuition had noticed two important writing techniques in The Shining … Foreshadowing and dramatic irony! Let’s break it down …

• What is Foreshadowing? This refers to hints or clues to suggest events that will happen later in the plot. Foreshadowing is used to create anxiety or suspense in the reader or viewer. (That’s why you will see it most in Horror, Thriller and Mysteries, though technically you can use it in any genre you like). MORE HERE.
• What Is Dramatic Irony? This is when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. This is the result of the reader having a greater knowledge than the characters themselves. Put simply: the audience or reader KNOWS STUFF the actual characters don’t. MORE HERE.

Because I am an epic plotting nerd, I ended up doing a deep dive into both these techniques. If you’ve read my crime and thriller novels, you will know I like to use both foreshadowing and dramatic irony A LOT.

However, it always surprises me how infrequently I see both in the spec pile. For this reason, I am going to break down The Shining this Halloween to help you indentify and include foreshadowing and dramatic irony in YOUR scripts and novels.

The Shining Controversy

But first up, let’s address the various elephants in the room … Stephen King famously loathes Kubrick’s version of his classic novel. He claims Shelley Duvall’s interpretation of Wendy in The Shining is ‘one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film’. He even goes so far as to say all she does is scream and do stupid things.

Obviously, King can feel however he wants based on his own story, but I disagree VERY strongly. I believe Wendy in the movie is a very capable female character. She is an excellent mother, always putting Danny first. She plays with him and tries to protect him from his father’s moods. Wendy strives to be a good wife, plus she picks up the slack at the hotel and does all Jack’s work FOR him.

What’s more, she is literally locked in with a madman at The Overlook. I think I would scream A LOT if it were me! She confronts Jack, overpowering him and locking him in the storeroom. She also protects Danny well when Jack breaks down the bathroom door with that axe, ensuring she delivers the little boy to safety from the window.

But Wendy is much more than ‘just’ a mother and wife in The Shining. While ‘women in peril’ is a standard trope in horror and thriller, I think she is very realistic. I believe King’s dislike stems from a thematic change from the source material. The book is much more about the corrupting, supernatural power of The Overlook … Whereas I’d argue The Shining movie is much more about domestic abuse in my opinion.

In addition, some fans were dismayed to hear that Kubrick ‘abused’ Shelley Duvall during the filming of The Shining.  I know I was when I read about this. However, apparently this was not true.

Duvall herself consistently denied the movie caused her twenty-year hiatus from film. While we may never know the truth for certain, I don’t think it’s feminist to decide FOR Duvall herself.

Lastly, some elements of The Shining have obviously dated. This is because the movie came out forty-five years ago. Obviously, representation of race in particular has moved on (and rightly so). However, breaking down the movie minute-by-minute reveals some interesting elements that I had not considered before (see the analysis).

A Complete Breakdown of The Shining

PROLOGUE/ CREDITS SEQUENCE

The Shining begins … We glide over the mountains like a God before spotting a little yellow car. It climbs the mountains towards The Overlook Hotel.

ACT 1: THE INTERVIEW

Intro Jack, who meets Mr Ullman, manager of The Overlook hotel.

Intro Wendy and Danny – and also Tony, Danny’s ‘imaginary friend’. Wendy is reading A Catcher In The Rye. With Kubrick, everything has meaning, even the smallest touches like this. Catcher is a novel infamous for its depiction of alienation and suicide, as well as its smoking, alcohol, profanity and violence. All of these elements appear in The Shining as well.

Tony tells Wendy he does not want to go to The Overlook for the winter. Wendy tells Tony not to be silly, they will all have a great time.

Mr. Ullman tells Jack about Delbert Grady, who was hired to be the caretaker at The Overlook in 1970. This man killed his family before taking his own life. Jack is unconcerned by this and claims Wendy will be too. Of course, Jack is wrong and this will be how the Torrance family’s story plays out here.

Back in Colorado, Tony tells Danny that Jack got the job. He is proved right when Jack calls to tell Wendy. Danny asks Tony why he doesn’t want to go to The Overlook.

Tony shows Danny the elevator at hotel, which cascades with blood and two little girls (we assume Grady’s daughters). Danny screams.

CUT TO: A doctor examines Danny

It appears Danny was in a trance. She quizzes him about Tony, but Danny doesn’t want to talk about it. The doctor quizzes Wendy next, who tells her how Jack injured Danny ‘by accident’. She makes excuses for Jack and says he now doesn’t touch alcohol.

Jack takes Wendy and Danny to The Overlook. On the way they talk about The Donner Party, early settlers who had to resort to cannibalism when they got snowbound in similar mountains.

The Torrance family arrive as The Overlook is closing down for the winter.

Mr Ullman shows them The Colorado lounge, the iconic main hall (‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ – an example of foreshadowing). Wendy is enthused now, but later she will scream in there … first that Jack hurt Danny, then when she has to knock Jack out with the baseball bat on the stairs.

Danny is the games room playing darts when he sees the little girls from his vision

Meanwhile, Mr Ullman shows Wendy and Jack their apartment before showing them the hedge maze: ‘I wouldn’t want to go in there unless I had an hour to find my way out.’ DRAMATIC IRONY KLAXON!

There is discussion of the ‘Indian burial ground’ trope King is so (in)famous for. Also the Snowcat is foreshadowed, followed by The Gold Ball Room where Jack will end up in the picture dated 1921 at the end.

Mr Ullman introduces them to Mr Halloran, the cook. Wendy and Danny go with him to the kitchen. He shows them around and calls Danny ‘Doc’.

Shows them the storeroom – more foreshadowing, since Wendy will lock Jack in there later.

IMPORTANT: It’s revealed here too that Mr Halloran is just like Danny and has ‘shining’

Mr Ullman shows Wendy and Jack the boiler. Mr Halloran tells Danny about The Shining. Danny tells him about Tony, the little boy that lives in his mouth. He says it is as if he goes to sleep and that Tony shows him things, but he can’t always remember what they are. He admits he doesn’t remember what Tony showed him about The Overlook.

Mr Halloran tells him that people with The Shining can sometimes see things that happened a long time ago. He says lots of things happened at The Overlook … and not all of them were good.

TURNING POINT 1: Danny asks what is in room 237? Mr Halloran says there’s nothing there, but also but STAY OUT.

ACT 2: A MONTH LATER

We are now into Act 2. A wolf howls in the distance. Classic horror movie fare, but Wendy is bringing breakfast in bed to Jack in her pyjamas, a picture-perfect doting wife. Danny drives his pedal care throughout the hotel.

So far their lives in the hotel seem to be going well. Wendy and Jack talk about the hotel and Jack says that when he came for his interview, it was as if he had been there before (more foreshadowing).

Jack attempts to write but instead plays with a tennis ball. Outside, Wendy and Danny play and go into the hedge maze.

Jack stares at the model of the hedge maze in the hotel reception, like he is God watching his family inside. This brings back thoughts of seeing his car from above at the beginning of the movie.

TUESDAY

Wendy works hard; something tells us Jack might have got the job, but she is the one actually doing it. The TV walks about a missing woman up in Aspen who was last seen on a hunting trip with her husband – IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND! Yet more foreshadowing.

Danny is back driving his pedal care throughout throughout the hotel. Finding  himself outside room 237, he tries the door but finds it locked. He remembers the two little girls.

In the Colorado hall, Jack is typing away. Wendy interrupts him. She tells him it is going to snow that night. Though Jack’s temper is hinted at before this scene, this is the first time we see its true heat as he rips up pages and tells her to get the fuck out. It will be all downhill for Wendy and Danny from here.

THURSDAY

Wendy and Danny play in the snow. Jack watches from the window with that slack, creepy iconic grin. It is this moment that we realise something is very wrong with him.

SATURDAY

Jack is typing again, though this time he looks normal. Wendy is still looking after the hotel for him; the phone line is down. Going to Mr Ullman’s office, she uses the radio to hail the local forest service. He confirms the phones are down due to the storm and are likely to stay that way until the spring. He recommends they keep the radio on.

Danny is back on his pedal car, this time in the lower floors of the hotel. He sees the little girls again. They finally speak to him, ‘Hello Danny. come and play with us.’ He sees their dead bodies, all the blood.

Danny tells Tony he is scared. Tony reminds Danny what Mr Halloran said: it’s just like pictures in a book.

MONDAY

Wendy and Danny watch television. On screen, a kind man is nice to a woman, who is cordial and welcoming with him in turn. Again, this is on purpose because this is a far cry from how Jack treats his family.

Danny wants his fire engine, but Wendy is worried about noise. Jack only went to bed a few hour’s earlier. Danny creeps into the apartment with exaggerated care – they are both used to literally tiptoeing around him.

But Jack is awake. Danny asks to get his toy, but Jack wants him to come to him first. Danny seems reticent. Jack attempts to hug him, but it is a parody of fatherhood.

Danny asks his father if he feels bad. Jack insists he is fine, just tired. He asks Jack why he won’t go to sleep. Jack says he has too much to do (erm, Wendy is doing all the work!).  Danny does not trust him, or like the hotel. He tells his father what he wants to hear.

Then, THOSE words from Jack: ‘I wish we could stay here for ever and ever and ever.’

Danny asks his father if he would hurt him and Wendy. Jack tells him he wouldn’t, but his supposedly reassuring grin is not comforting at all. It’s creepy. We are left feeling he will.

WEDNESDAY

Danny plays with his toy cars on the hotel hallway carpet upstairs. His father’s tennis ball rolls towards him as if from nowhere. Strikingly, he calls for his mother rather than Jack … only to see the door to room 237 is now open, the key in the lock.

Wendy is still busy doing all Jack’s work in the hotel, this time tending the boiler. When she hears Jack screaming, she runs through the hotel towards him.

He is in the big hall, having a nightmare. She wakes him. Jack is very distressed. He tells her he dreamt that he killed her and Danny, chopping them to little pieces. She tells him everything will be okay.

It’s now Danny makes an appearance. His clothes are ripped, his neck has finger marks on it and he’s sucking his thumb, traumatised. Wendy sees to him and discovers he is in shock. That’s when she makes her accusation …

MIDPOINT: ‘You did this to him, didn’t you? You son of a bitch! How could you?? How could you!’

If movies are a game of two halves – and they are – then this accusation takes us into the second, much spookier half of The Shining. It’s not difficult to see why Wendy thinks it was Jack. He’s hurt Danny before, plus he has been behaving oddly AND he’s been dreaming about killing his family.

Even so, like a typical abuser, Jack gets butthurt about the unfairness of it all and goes to the empty Gold Room. Sitting at the bar, he says more words that solidify his deal with the devil: ‘I’d sell my soul for just a glass of beer.’

Lloyd the bartender magically appears here

He serves him bourbon as Jack laments another racist trope, ‘white man’s burden’ that links back to the ‘Indian burial ground’. He actively celebrates falling off the wagon and then confesses how he hurt Danny, but still doesn’t take responsibility for it. All of this underscores what a bad guy Jack is.

A very distressed Wendy appears with a baseball bat. In the stress of it all, she seems to have forgotten her accusation of minutes – or hours – earlier. She tells Jack that Danny told her there’s a ‘crazy woman in room 237’ who tried to strangle him. Wendy does not appear to notice Jack’s sour reaction.

In Florida, Mr Halloran watches the news surrounded by 1970s-style ‘Black is Beautiful’ art. Again, it should be remembered that Kubrick always creates meaning in the entire frame. The pics back then would have been a radical celebration of black culture and self-love rather than mere icky nudey pics. (It should be noted a white woman – both young AND old – is naked in the very next scene, plus the art is likely also a strike back at Jack’s racism in the previous scene. Not to mention Grady’s use of the ‘N word’ in the red bathroom later as well).

The television says the winter storm has backed everything up in Colorado.

That’s when Halloran receives Danny’s SOS about room 237 via the ‘Shining’ they both share

At the same time, Jack investigates Room 237 and sees a gorgeous, naked nymph in the bathtub. They kiss but she morphs into a rotting corpse. Horrified, Jack runs from room 237.

Mr Halloran tries to get through to The Overlook, but of course the phone lines are down. Jack returns to the apartment, but far from being freaked out he tells Wendy there was nothing in 237. He tells Wendy Danny must have done his injuries to himself.

Dramatic irony again: we – and Danny – know Jack is a liar, even if Wendy doesn’t.

Danny sees the iconic REDRUM sign in his mind, along with the blood and elevator

When Wendy says they need to get Danny out of the hotel, Jack shows his true colours. Ranting about his family ‘fucking his life up’, he trashes the pots and pans downstairs before returning to the Gold Room.

This time around, the huge ballroom is occupied and there are signs of a party everywhere. At the same time, Mr Halloran manages to raise someone in the forest service. The man agrees to hail the Torrances on the radio.

Jack goes into The Gold Room where he is greeted warmly. Everyone appears to be from the past, with 1920s-style music playing. When Jack attempts to pay, Lloyd the bartender tells him his money is no good there, ‘orders from the house’ (aka The Hotel).

A butler spills Advocaat on Jack and takes him to a bright red bathroom to clean him up, ‘You’re the important one.’

The butler reveals his name is Delbert Grady. Jack remembers the name, asking him if he was once the caretaker at The Overlook. Grady insists he wasn’t. When Jack describes what Grady did to his family, the butler tells him he has no recollection of that at all. He tells Jack he is the caretaker and always has been.

That’s when Grady drops his bombshell, telling Jack that Danny is attempting to bring Halloran to the hotel. Jack is at a loss on how he can do this, so Grady tells him about The Shining.

Back at the apartment, Wendy goes through her options

She plans on calling the forest rangers and using the snowcat to get down the mountain.

In his room, Danny starts yelling ‘REDRUM!’ Tony takes over, talking to Wendy instead. Wendy keeps telling Danny to wake up, believing he is in a trance again.

Wandering through the hotel again, Jack hears the forest rangers on the radio. He sabotages the radio. Mr. Halloran calls the forest service and is perturbed to hear they didn’t get through to the Torrances.

8AM

Mr Halloran is on a flight to Colorado from Florida. Meanwhile, Jack is typing feverishly away in the great hall. Mr Halloran lands and calls his friend Larry from the airport. He asks Larry to hook him up with a Snowcat. To save time explaining, he lies to Larry, saying the Torrances are unreliable and he needs to replace them.

In the apartment, Wendy and Danny watch cartoons. Tony has still taken over Danny. Wendy goes to talk to Jack. She takes the bat with her.

Wendy finds the big hall empty and that’s when she finds the iconic ‘all work and no play’ pages. Upset and freaked out, this is when she realises how far everything has gone.

Jack is back and Wendy can’t live in denial any longer. He is a big threat. Wendy doesn’t know what to do. Danny ‘watches’ their confrontation via The Shining, seeing the blood in the elevator at the same time.

Screaming and crying, Wendy says Danny should be taken to a doctor. Jack does not behave like a concerned father, yelling about his ‘responsibilities’ (yes, even though it was Wendy doing all the work).

TURNING POINT 2:  They fight on the stairs and by luck rather than design, Wendy manages to knock Jack out with the bat

We are now into Act 3

She drags Jack to the storeroom Mr Halloran showed them earlier and locks him in. They should be safe now, right?

OF COURSE NOT. Durr. Jack alternates between hollering threats from the storeroom and pleading. Devastated, Wendy tells she is leaving in the Snowcat with Danny. That’s when Jack drops his bombshell: ‘You’re not going ANYWHERE!’ Wendy rushes into the snow to find the Snowcat has been sabotaged by Jack.

4PM

Jack is asleep on some sacks in the storeroom when someone knocks on the door. It’s not Wendy, but Grady. He is not happy with Jack, but lets him out of the storeroom.

Meanwhile, Mr Halloran is in his own Snowcat and approaching the The Overlook. Tony is still in control of Danny and murmuring ‘REDRUM’. He picks up a knife and draws on the door. He starts yelling it, waking Wendy who sees MURDER written on the mirror.

That’s when Jack starts to bash the door down with an axe. Wendy locks her and Danny in the bathroom. The bathroom window is stuck fast with snow. Danny squeezes out but Wendy can’t make it. She tells Danny to run and hide.

Jack bashes the bathroom door in as Wendy screams. When he attempts to open the door lock, she slashes his hand with the knife. That’s when they hear Halloran approach in the Snowcat, an unlikely reprieve.

Downstairs, Danny has made it back into the lower corridors of the hotel. He hides in a cupboard as his father stalks the halls with the axe. Wendy stays crying in the bathroom, unsure what to do.

Halloran makes it into the hotel, not knowing what he will find

Jack is alerted to his presence when Halloran calls out, ‘Hello? is anybody here?’ OH MR HALLORAN! Don’t you know everyone in horror movies dies when they do that??!

Sure enough, Jack ambushes him and kills him with the axe. Danny ‘sees’ this via their connection and screams in tandem, revealing where he is. Jack goes after him.

Wendy starts seeing all the spiritual activity in The Overlook, including what appears to be a pair of furries in one of the bedroom. Danny makes it back outside, drawing Jack out the front. The little boy runs into the hedge maze, Jack following.

Wendy is still running about the hotel looking for Danny

She finds Mr Halloran’s body but there’s no time for that. She sees a disfigured party guest and sees skeletons in the Gold Room, covered in cobwebs. Wendy also sees the blood crashing down from elevator at this point too.

In the hedge maze, Danny stops and cleverly retraces his steps in the snow. He hides as his father blunders past, confused as to where Danny could have gone. Danny runs back towards the hotel. Jack is hopelessly lost in the maze.

Wendy has made it outside. She stands by Halloran’s Snowcat, with Danny appearing out of the maze. Still inside, Jack’s injuries are catching up with him and he is running out of energy. He wails incomprehensibley as Wendy drives herself and Danny to safety.

CUT TO: Jack, frozen to death

The threat is over. In The Gold Room at The Overlook, the party goes on. On the wall, a photograph dated 1921, with Jack front and centre. Just like Grady said, Jack has always been there. And here’s the visual breakdown of the story below.

Too small for you to read? No problem, CLICK HERE or on the pic to download a larger, PDF version.

Enjoy and Happy Halloween!