Life

This IKEA Ad Perfectly Spoofs "The Shining"

Alright, IKEA, you win Halloween. While all the other major superstores in the world are probably kicking it into gear on all their holiday marketing campaigns, IKEA made sure not to neglect our favorite fright-filled holiday by running an IKEA ad based on The Shining , Stanley Kubrick's infamous 1980 horror film about a haunted hotel that I seem to remember watching from under a couch cushion with my fingers plugged in my ears. ("Not that scary," my ass.)

The ad, which runs mostly in Singapore, features a little boy tricycling through an IKEA store at night, with all sorts of ghoulish lighting and whispers in the dark. We find out later that this is their clever way of reminding us that they're open until 11PM, but in the moment, anyone watching is consumed not only by the creepiness of it, but by the awesome way the whole ad is shot: the entire maze that the boy on the bike weaves through the store is filmed in one seamless take. Props to whomever was tasked with filming that, and whomever added the creepy effects. I mean, I already knew from that one 30 Rock episode where Liz Lemon and her boyfriend visit IKEA ("SILENCE, prisoner! I mean – how can I help you, valued customer?") that it can be the stuff of nightmares, but this ad truly took it to another level.

I think my favorite part of this ad is that it isn't all that far from the truth: The official IKEA YouTube account claims in a comment: "Relax...this video is purely fictional. No customers have reported any weird sightings at our stores nor have we found any skeletons in our closets." I guess they are conveniently forgetting about the bag of bones of about 80 people found in IKEA by a Swedish woman this past August? Oh, yeah, those bones.

Yikes. Well, Happy Halloween, IKEA. At least the bones aren't real this time.

Image: Warner Bros.