In this Video Essay, Michael Tucker discusses how the screenplay of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining not only redefined the potential for horror films to terrify audiences, but also augments the creepiness felt while watching it. The two most fascinating and unique aspects of Tucker’s piece are his personalized tone via voiceover and his stylization of his video to match the film itself. The author introduces the film using first person pronouns, which creates a tone of conversation and lacks assurance, which allows his viewers to interpret some of the points he is making and the sequences he is showing for themselves. Given that The Shining is a film I have seen countless times, I very much appreciated this quality of his commentary. Tucker’s editing exemplifies in many ways how one can effectively give an audience an idea of what a film is like as an experience without making them watch the whole thing. Like the movie, Tucker breaks up each section of his discussion dramatically, ending one thought process at a famous scene, making a black video cut and chapter title synced with the film’s score. One of his main arguments is that the plot, which is broken down into various time frames beginning with “The Interview” and slowly becoming more and more specific using months, days and eventually hours to express the change of time with heightening tension. Through the style of his piece, Tucker follows this aspect of The Shinging by starting with more general ideas about the film which he discusses quickly and then discussing more and more specific aspects of the film deeply.  In this case, however, I feel that having seen the movie is key to understanding the points Tucker is trying to make.