10 Ways Horror Movies Got Scarier By Accident
5. Unsettling Carpet Continuity - The Shining
As masterful and exacting a filmmaker as Stanley Kubrick was, even he wasn't beyond making a mistake or two, as evidenced by this bizarre continuity error that occurs during his horror masterpiece The Shining.
While Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) is playing with his toy cars and Jack's (Jack Nicholson) tennis ball rolls towards him, keep your eyes peeled on the pattern of the carpet that Danny is kneeled on.
Between cuts, the orientation of the iconic hexagonal carpet design flips, a "gaffe" that's been fiercely debated by fans ever since.
There are those Kubrick obsessives who simply feel that the director was too meticulous to make such a blatant mistake, and that it must have been done on purpose in order to signify something.
Others, however, are more willing to confess the flaws of their heroes, and admit that Kubrick simply screwed up while blocking and editing the scene.
The brilliance, of course, is that the mistake only enhances the film's already significant sense of reality-bending unease.