7. The Shining

FB: The maze scene is great. Literally a-maze-ing. I love how picturesque and cinematic The Shining is. A lot of horror films are quite claustrophobic. The Shining achieves that by having too much space. It’s like Open Water in that respect. The two films aren’t similar, but the space makes them claustrophobic. The opening shot when they’re driving up the mountain road is really disturbing, even though it shouldn’t be.

RZ: The opening scene looks a lot like where I grew up. The remoteness of it. I really love the use of Bartók on the soundtrack. There aren’t a lot of high strings. I think Kubrick stayed away from stereotypes. A lot of films took inspiration from Psycho, with the violins. You hear a lot of shrill harmonics in horror. But in The Shining you have elements of the ‘Dies Irae’ and choral music instead.