Room 237

Room 237 (2012)

Runtime: 102 minutes

Directed by: Rodney Ascher

Starring: This is a documentary about The Shining and various bizarre conspiracy theories surrounding it

From: Highland Park Classics

I've known all about this documentary since it came out. I put it off until last night, as I figured it'd be best to watch it a few hours after seeing The Shining again for the first time in years, which I have reviewed right below this one. I know it was polarizing but I thought it was pretty awful, not really for the crackpot theories these people have, but rather how it was done, which was atrocious. Read why in my Letterboxd review below.

I have heard about this documentary for awhile now and yet I wanted to wait until I rewatched The Shining, which I did a few hours before finally seeing this on Netflix Instant. Wow, did I not like this, and it isn't even for the theories presented-which I think are crackpot for the most part and only a few of the “facts” presented really mean anything... maybe there's more to it but the way the movie presents the information, I was not convinced-but rather how the documentary was done.

The Shining is a legendary film and it was done in a way where you are left with a lot of questions & interpretation is easy. I ended up seeing that film last night on the big screen and some people randomly sat by me; afterwards they all said to each other that they wanted to look into the movie more and try to answer the queries they had about it. I didn't say anything to them but maybe I should have remarked, “Yeah, you and everyone else. Don't expect to find any clear answers”.

The documentary interviews a few different people and they present their conspiracy theories which range from it being about the genocide of Native Americans to a story about a minotaur (?!) and a favorite for people to deride, Kubrick helped fake the Apollo moon landings and he left clues about it in the film. No matter what a person thinks about each theory, I expected it being a talking head documentary where you see each person on screen speaking and footage from the movie is shown to demonstrate their points; they finish then they move on. Was that done here? Nope!

Instead, this movie is done in the most confusing manner possible. You never see any of the people interviewed; that's right. They are only identified in the beginning and you better know right away which voice belongs to which person (there's one woman so at least that helps) as otherwise it'll take you a few sentences of someone speaking before you realize, “Oh yeah, that's the Holocaust guy!” or “that's the Native American dude”. You see, all the theories are presented at once and it's all a jumbled mess; It's incredibly frustrating and infuriating. Then again, this is such a slipshod production that when one guy is talking, you hear his young kid in the background making noise and he stops talking so he can discipline their tyke/make them not so loud... and they left that all in instead of cutting it out or even better, recording that section over again.

The footage shown just isn't from The Shining but rather it's from other Kubrick films or heck, media that has nothing to do with Old Stanley at all. As a mutual pointed out in her review, the footage of people in a theatre watching a movie is from Demons; yes, the Lamberto Bava classic from 1985. I recognized some of the cast as the footage they used includes looks at the audience; I was not expecting to see the Tony the Pimp character appear in Room 237, that is for damn sure. Plus, when the score isn't borrowed from the movie, it is bad and overbearing and distracting.

About the only fact presented that I find credible is that the set doesn't make logical sense, but that's obvious and others beforehand and afterwards have noted that this was done on purpose to create a disorientating effect. That should not be a major revelation. Really, the only thing this did for me in terms of information is present how NOT to do a documentary.