The Canal (2014) is a story about ghosts in a house driving a man insane by recalling vicious things that happened in the past. That is also an accurate one-sentence description of The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic that is seeded as one of the masterpieces of cinema.

Both films are fine examples of psychological horror played out in an atmosphere of surreal, hallucinogenic, ambiguously real scenes. It’s difficult to know if what is being witnessed is actually occurring or simply manifestations of the main character’s mental descent into madness. And in both films, the conclusion doesn’t give an answer to that ambiguity. Was David (Rupert Evans) in The Canal actually being possessed by spirits from the house’s past, or was he just driven insane by his wife’s infidelity and murder? In The Shining, was Jack (Jack Nicholson) a reincarnation of a caretaker previously involved with The Overlook hotel, assisted by the ghost of a former murderer? The answers are in interpretation, not in pure evidence.

The Canal heavily utilizes sound and score to amplify its material. In an interview with Complex, director Ivan Kavanagh was asked about The Canal’s score’s similarity to music in The Shining, and what influence the film played on his picture overall.

“I’m a big fan of 20th century classical stuff, and I probably get that from films like The Shining. I studied music when I was in my teens, and I wanted to be a composer at first, but I didn’t really have the talent for that. [Laughs.] I’ve always loved 20th century avant-garde music, though. I hadn’t a score like that in a film in a long time, other than The Shining and Jerry Goldsmith’s amazing score for Planet of the Apes. It really adds another level to it.”

The interviewer went on to ask about The Canal’s overall feel as compared to horror classics like The Shining. He questioned if it was Kavanaugh’s intention to mirror those styles, or to pay tribute to their techniques.

“The way I saw it was, he’s a film archivist, right? So these hallucinations or fantasies he’s having, if that’s what they are, would be colored by his job, and his job is watching films. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to reference the films I love, to make a film that at moments seems like a Dario Argento film and at other moments like a different directors’ films. It seemed right for the character. The film is about cinema, in a way. I don’t usually do that referential thing in my films, but it just fit here. And a lot of them are unconscious. If you love the genre and love certain films in it, you can’t help but be influenced by them. Another one we looked at a lot for this film was Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, specifically for that film’s look. We use a lot of zooms and lenses that are directly influenced by Don’t Look Now. We put a lot of thought into everything.”