The Shining

In today’s lesson (Monday 15th December 2008), to give us an idea of what a successful and suspenseful thriller consists of and how suspense is created, we watched an ‘edge of your seat’ thriller called ‘The Shining’. After watching ‘The Shining’, the answer was clear. The key element to create a successful thriller was; many suspenseful moments.
‘The Shining’ was a great thriller to watch to help us understand how suspense is conveyed, as it was very suspenseful all throughout the film. During the lesson, we had to make notes on the thriller while watching it, but I must say that there were many moments where it was so suspenseful I was so drawn in that I had forgotten to jot down notes.
A way which suspense was created was by keep on showing the ‘haunted’ hotel room number, 217. This was very suspenseful because the audience wanted to know what was behind the door. The main element which adds more tension to the situation is through music/ soundtrack and background noise.
Right from the beginning of the thriller suspense and tension was created by using a birds eye view shot to show the car travelling through the dark hills further in the distance, this was perfect to convey suspense and tension because it connotated isolation and loneliness. Also, to credit this, the use of droning music was a perfect choice of background music to add to the tension and suspense in the opening credit.