Name: Why the scariest part of The Shining isn’t what you think
Uploaded: 2025-10-25T13:17:33.402Z
Duration: 5 min 14 s
Description: How did Stanley Kubrick manage to make shots of a hallway creepy? Well, by making those hallways feel not just scary, but more specifically, Uncanny.

How did Stanley Kubrick manage to make shots of a hallway creepy? Well, by making those hallways feel not just scary, but more specifically, Uncanny.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining remains a uniquely frightening film decades after its release, not because of high body counts or graphic imagery, but due to its masterful use of the uncanny. The film's setting—the Overlook Hotel—was meticulously designed to replicate real, familiar spaces, yet its emptiness and normalcy evoke a deep sense of unease. 

Rather than relying on classic haunted house tropes, Kubrick created an environment that feels both familiar and disturbingly wrong, tapping into the psychological discomfort of liminal spaces. This approach has influenced a subgenre of horror that focuses on the eeriness of ordinary places, making The Shining's unsettling atmosphere its most memorable and enduring feature.

Why the scariest part of The Shining isn’t what you think

Why is The Shining still so scary? It's been 45 years since the film came out. We've had countless horror movies since with insanely high kill counts and absolutely shocking imagery. I should be numb to a story where, spoilers for a cinematic classic, only two people die and one because the doofus couldn't find his way out of a hedge maze. And yet, this movie is frightening in a way that's really hard to pin down. How did Stanley Kubrick manage to make shots of a hallway creepy? Well, by making those hallways feel not just scary, but more specifically, uncanny. These days, uncanny is a concept used most often in discourse about robots and computer animation. The Uncanny Valley, I know you've heard of it, or at least you know the feeling it evokes. The abject horror of this kid from the Polar Express. Good God, get him off the screen. The uncanny speaks to the fear of something that isn't fully unknown. It's unfamiliar, while retaining elements of familiarity, and that tension causes a deep sense of unease. Returning to the valley, think of those robots that move in a way that's slightly wrong, and suddenly you feel unsafe, in danger. But you're not even sure exactly why. And this isn't confined to robots and animation, of course. Lots of stuff can be described as uncanny, including ghosts, doppelgangers, and can even be used to characterize a human face. This is a shot of a man smiling. Right? He's just a regular guy, sitting, smiling, in a totally normal way. Right? Breaking it down, you can see a through line here. We're being confronted with human or humanoid bodies not quite lining up with what we're expecting. Let's take it one step further. Over the threshold from uncanny bodies, to uncanny places. For example, have you ever been in a dead mall before? There should be people here. It's built for foot traffic, but it's empty, silent, falling apart. There's nothing dangerous that you can see, but it feels terrible to be here. It feels off. Kubrick leaned all the way in on this feeling with The Shining, which is set in a hotel that's closed for the season. The halls and sitting rooms are empty, too empty. It's disquieting from the jump, because this isn't what a hotel is supposed to look like, to feel like. But sure, lots of movies are set in creepy old houses. But the Overlook Hotel isn't creepy, at least on its face. There aren't cobwebs and creaky floorboards and the disjointed architecture that distinguishes the classic haunted house. Instead, Kubrick decided to make the Overlook as real as possible by sending out photographers to capture hundreds of pictures of real hotel halls and rooms and elevators, then picking the ones he found most interesting or evocative to build his sets from, replicating them down to the inch. And I mean that literally. They photographed the spaces with rulers in frame to make sure they were fully to scale. The red bathroom where Jack meets Grady? That is, or was, a real bathroom created one-to-one on a soundstage in England. The fact that all of these spaces are clean, mundane, and downright normal just makes the discomfort all the more pronounced, because they feel like spaces we are familiar with. But something is clearly wrong in this hotel. We see Jack in a ballroom, all alone. It's a place that's meant to be full of dancing and frivolity, yet it's silent and still. And that's spooky enough. Then, we see the once-empty ballroom full. Wait, why the hell is it full? It should feel suddenly normalized, and yet it's all the more terrifying because this is wrong, too. It is, you might say, uncanny. That word can easily be used to describe a more modern obsession on the internet. Liminal spaces, and in the case of The Shining, liminal spaces in horror. The Back Rooms is an internet post that became a popular topic on YouTube and message boards, to the point that there's an A24 movie coming out next year about it. It describes a place between places, yellow hallways and rooms that kind of look like a store you've been in before, but devoid of products. It's horribly familiar, yet horribly wrong. The post has been credited with kicking off the liminal space subgenre. Where people discuss the places they've encountered that feel creepy for reasons that are difficult to describe. Usually, places that aren't meant to be observed for such extended periods. Hallways, empty conference rooms, the mundane places in our lives that aren't meant to be lingered on. It's been 45 years, but the vibes of The Overlook are still a phenomenon. So sure, the lady in the tub is pretty scary, as are the twins. The skeletons, not so much. But at least for me, the most memorable bits of this movie are the long tracking shots through the hallways. The echoing emptiness of the Colorado lounge. The unshakable feeling of wrongness that The Overlook Hotel brings by simply being normal, and not at once. But what do you think? Does The Shining still give you nightmares? Or has it gotten dated, at least as an entry in the horror genre? Let us know in the comments. And if you want to see more stuff from Mashable, please like and subscribe. It helps others find this vid, so we'd really appreciate it.

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