For many, the thought of even setting foot in an IKEA warehouse—with its cafeteria Swedish meatballs and winding corridors piled high with unpronounceable furniture—is a scary idea. The thought of doing so at night only compounds the problem. The Singaporean branch of the multinational retailer has taken these insights to heart and produced an ad based on the Big Wheel scene from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, ensuring that all who see it shop exclusively online for the rest of their lives.
IKEA has a reputation for making quirky, off-kilter commercials, including one mocking Apple’s heavy-handed iPhone ads and another directed by Spike Jonze criticizing the audience’s tendency to anthropomorphize everyday objects. This latest ad fits comfortably into that tradition, aping the look and mood of Kubrick’s famous Steadicam shot through the Overlook Hotel while making excellent use of the sprawling layout of an IKEA store. The commercial even takes an honest stab at making those weird, chanting hallway twins even creepier than they already were.
