The Set

Inside the Overlook Hotel set, which was built at EMI Elstree Studios in North London, there are huge rooms including Jack’s writing space and the Gold Room, all of which physically could not fit in the exterior of the Overlook Hotel. The uncanny atmosphere during the whole movie gives the hotel an already creepy vibe. Throughout the film mirrors are used in certain shots to emphasise the uncanniness of the scene. Richard Jameson states that “standard reality-illusion device of mirrors” (Jameson, 1980, Pg. 28) is used throughout the film. For example, when Danny goes looking for his toy and Jack is sitting on the bed it cuts to the shot showing Danny, Jack and Jack’s reflection in a mirror. Subconsciously it looks like there are three people in the bedroom and it adds to the idea that Stanley Kubrick’s look of ghosts in The Shining are to do with mirrors. This introduces the idea of the Doppelganger, the double mirror image of something or someone that comes across within the scene. Andrew J. Webber states in his book that the Doppelganger theory is surrounded by the idea of “deductively and inductively” (Webber, 1996, Pg. 2) which plays out within the scene – you can deduct that it is indeed Jack but you can deduct what his intentions are. In another scene, when Jack meets the ghost of Delbert Grady in the bathroom, there are mirrors in the scene adding to my point above. My final piece of evidence is the bathroom scene in room 237, where Jack cheats on his wife, there is a nude woman who emerges from the bath and it is not until he looks in the mirror that he realises she an old decaying woman who is clearly a ghost.