Movies - TV
One Of It’s Always Sunny’s Best Episodes Pays Tribute To A Horror Classic
By DANIELLE RYAN
One of the best “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” episodes is Season 11’s “Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs.” Part of what makes it great is its use of horror elements.
While other episodes have leaned into aspects of horror, “Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs” draws inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”
After their apartment burns down, Mac and Dennis move to a big house to save money. However, suburbia brings out something truly sinister in both of them.
Dennis begins to mirror “The Shining’s” Jack Torrance’s derangement from the commute to work, listening to Bryan Adams and screaming homicidal threats at other drivers.
Mac also begins to lose his sanity due to loneliness as Dennis makes him stay home to work on the house and forces him into a homemaker role that he “didn’t go to school for.”
In a way, Mac mirrors Wendy, who does her best to hold it all together when her husband Jack starts going insane in the Overlook. However, both Mac and Dennis begin to go crazy.
Unlike “The Shining,” the cause of their madness is from being trapped with one another, without anyone else around to cut the tension.
Other nods to “The Shining” include Dennis’ deranged appearance at the dinner table mirroring Jack’s crazed stare across his typewriter.