HORROR MOVIE: THE SHINING

By Lilia Paz Espinosa

In horror movies there are always ghosts as a one of the principal elements to get the attention of the audience who is interested in this kind of movies. There are many elements which contribute to make a perfect environment to create the suspense in the audience. In The Shining film as in other  horror movies combine the ghosts, possesion and what they produce in the spectator to create an attractive movie to watch.

The ghost simbolyzes dead people who sometimes appear in a flash of light in front of the main characters or in dreams to suggest that they want to transmit that something is wrong in the place. In those cases the ghosts are peaceful and produce expectation in the way that they appear. For example,  in The Shining movie the child saw the two girls who were killed by their father before in the hotel and he could see how they were murdered and how he and his mother will be killed. There is another movie called In The Amityville Horror in which a Little boy could see one little girl who is a ghost who lived in the house and she was murdered in the house too. In both cases the special effects and the music can produce the expectation in the audience, because sometimes is more louder with special effects to create creepy sounds.

Many films use the factor of possesion of the main character who tries to kill other people, sometimes as a revenge or reproduce the same event again and again. For instance, In The Shining movie the main character seems to have been possessed by an evil ghost or demon who lives in the hotel and triesto repeat the same event that happened before with his family. Similarly, In the movie which is called Some One Behind You the main character is possessed by a dead person who tries to kill the people who kill her and her mother in revenge. But at the end of those movies suggest that the characters who were possessed by someone, were actually an reencarnation of their past lives, these end in the horror movies produce more expectations.

The directors of this kind of films use the ghosts and other elements to produce anxiety, fear and confusion in the spectators. For example, in The Shining Jack had a  conversation with other character who suggests they were dead because he was alone in the hotel with her family, or the scene with the young woman who becomes an old woman, the spectator can think that it was produced by his broken mind. Also in the movie called February 29 suggest the main character was in danger because one killer appears only in February 29 to kill and she had a confrontation with him and feels that this person followed her but at the end of the movie apparently she is mentally disturbed and only created this scenes in her mind. Those kind of films causes in the audience many feelings until at the end, it is one goal that is produced by the directors.

The sucess of horror movies is because the films create the perfect environment to coexist the ghosts and apparent possession to produce many feelings in the audience who like this kind of movies, and represent the supernatural and mysticism that the people can not be able to see in the real life, so enjoy the suspence that it was created by the story that suggests many interpretations of the role of the ghosts as a killers, possesors or was created by other side of reality.