Moving westward from Vermont, the Torrence Family stays for a few months in an apartment complex in Boulder, Colorado.

∆  The Boulder apartment complex points west as the afternoon sun casts shadows east. 

∆  Slight shadows indicate we are facing west. Moving boxes ready to swallow book collection for next destination.

∆  A blue matrix dress, crown of cleansers, and a vegetarian diet on her shoulder, Wendy looks southwest for her son.

∆  Various cartoon stickers point east and west as Danny faces the mirror in the bathroom westward from his bedroom across the hall. Dopey leads Woodstock west while an owl leads Snoopys and Minnie east. A flock of birds are indecisive. The camera moves west.

∆  Facing north in the kitchen, the refrigerator lies east, upon which we see three postcards: to the bottom left, a blue sea side city; to the top, a dark cross above a sun over dark gold horizon; to the top right, a monolith surrounded by a red and bue stargate of rotational-symmetry. Kool-Aid canisters lead the way to coffee Thermos tip top, revealing the row of storage cubes above. 

∆  Jack’s call has Wendy heading eastward, crossing a clock-topped planting rod and slender floral monolith, revealing the exit door to the apartment.

∆  Wendy blocks our view of the exit door, just as a blue woven chair blocks the closet door. A blue indian pillow guards the south, while in the east, a cross-haired dog in a circle-squared frame tops a red book and television mountain. 

∆  As Danny faces northward into the mirror, the western sun shines through green and gold floral patterns. The mirror and tile form a step up towards the switch in the northeast, launching over the dark, green mountainside of towel below.

∆  Danny’s room occupies the northeast corner of the apartment. The yellow rubber ducky from the initial bathroom shot has now travelled northeast to rest on the window sill. 

∆  The doctor heads south down the hallway, revealing a sunlit green room to the north, with a sewing machine, old-fashioned hair dryer, and kitch cartoon couple. Since this room would be about half the width of Danny’s room, we can assume it to be a small sun room, perhaps leading to a balcony deck, but obviously Wendy’s domain. 

∆  The doctor and Wendy continue down the hall past two alternating closed doors to the east and west.

∆  The doctor and Wendy pass a panel separating the kitchen from the living room. A painting of a horse running down a race track points southwest from Wendy’s head.

∆  Two large, curtained windows line the south wall. We can tell from the second row of curtains and the elevated kitchen’s tall box cupboards, that this room has a rather tall ceiling and these windows are probably more square than perspective leads on. Books shadow the doctor’s head, while books extend from Wendy’s face. The doctor gathers information while Wendy offers it. Or do they? 

∆  Mapping the apartment, we begin to see similarities between it and the Overlook Hotel. For starters, in both locations, the windows of the interior have no analog to the exterior.  

∆  The bathroom window poses a question. With windows lighting the north and south of the apartment, does the bathroom window mean the apartment is also open to the west? How does the apartment fit in with the rest of the complex? Is the bathroom window another impossible light source like those found in the Overlook? Consider we are shown the impossible window of the Overlook Manager’s Office just before we are introduced to the Boulder Apartment.

∆  In one continuous shot, Jack travels through the Overlook Lobby to the Office whose window contradicts the hallway beyond the elevator we are just shown.

∆  As the secretary leaves for coffee, the Office fades to the Boulder Apartment.

∆  As Jack faces the Office’s impossible window to the east, a dissolve reveals the Boulder bathroom window shining from the west.

∆  After Wendy moves east to receive Jack’s phone call, Danny receives a ‘shining’ elevator vision and is next seen moved east to his bedroom. The next time Danny receives a ‘shining’ elevator vision, he is in his bedroom at the Overlook, overhearing his parents argue in their bedroom across the hall.

∆  Danny’s vision movement in the Boulder Apartment is mirrored in the Overlook apartment set up, with Danny’s bedroom in the west and the location of his Twins vision in the east. There’s even an elevator between the two points.

∆ What remains behind closed doors at the Boulder apartment? The parents’ bedroom for one. Jack’s writing space for another. We can assume the bedroom would be the bigger room to the west of the hallway, and the living room closet making the eastern room a small cube, perhaps the location of Jack’s typewriter (unseen in the apartment scenes.) Do the bedroom and study have windows? Does Jack write in the dark?

∆  At the Overlook, Jack writes facing east, as he would in the Boulder Apartment.

∆  At the Boulder Apartment, Danny’s bedroom is north of Jack’s writing space. At the Overlook, the hallways outside Room 237 are above Jack’s writing space. 

∆ The layout of the Boulder Apartment is reversed in the Overlook Apartment, where, as Ullman intones, the “living room, bedroom, bathroom” run north to south. 

∆  In Boulder, the living room/bedroom/bathroom run south to north, capped with Wendy’s blue green sewing room, recalling the Beyond Infinite Hotel from 2001.

∆  Note the writing desk opposite the bed and blue bathroom door nearby.

∆  Beyond the bathroom of the Overlook apartment lies Danny’s escape to the blue of the Hedge Maze.