My niece was watching Toy Story recently, a film which I have not seen in quite some time, when a small detail jumped out at me. The pattern of the carpet in the neighbour’s house where Buzz and Woody have been trapped is a match for the carpet in the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
Here we see Woody and Buzz attempting escape and Tommy playing with his toy cars in hallways of the hotel:
The carpet of this hallway in the Overlook is the backdrop for many of The Shining’s more memorable more moments, the door to room 237 opens up off this hall, the momentary flash of the uncanny twins and of course one of cinema’s more memorable sound effects with Tommy’s tricycle running from floorboards to carpet and back again.
The use of this carpet pattern in Toy Story then seems suitable in light of what lies behind the door to Sid’s bedroom — a shadowed world of dissected, tortured toys grafted together and reassembled into horror show hybrid beings.
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