Probably the most memorable aspects about The Shining, aside from the famous “Here’s Johnny!” scene, is the soundtrack. The use of scratching and plucking a violin creates a really unnerving sound that is completely opposite of what you hear when hearing violin. The soundtrack also does not match what you are seeing on screen. For example during a scene when Danny is on the tricycle you can hear the soundtrack building up and the breakdown happens but nothing ever happens on screen. This leaves you on edge because not only can you not trust your sight, you can also not trust what you hear. David J. Code talks about how critics found the soundtrack “iconic of its genre” (Code, 2009, Pg. 134) and even today you can hear reminisces of The Shining soundtrack in other media. The uncanny in the soundtrack is that it is all wrong. The way the instruments are played and also when the music is used, i.e. the breakdown implying something has happened when nothing in fact happened.
The Uncanny in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) - Word Count: 1394 