Review of Room 237 (2012) by Movie B — 23 Sep 2014

This documentary is one of the worst I've seen. The filmmakers rely on content to drive the film but the content is lacking. Commentators are boring and espouse theories that are absolutely outrageous (Ullman's introduction to Jack; 2001 as a test run for moon footage; a skier is actually a minotaur? Give me a break!). A German typewriter and the presence of the number 42 do not mean that the film is a metaphor for the Holocaust! How about the fact that Germans make damn good typewriters that rarely jam? Maybe Kubrick used a German typewriter when he was writing screenplays. Who knows. The woman who has spent way too much time analyzing the layout of the Overlook doesn't understand that spatial inconsistencies are often employed by filmmakers to elicit a sense of unease in viewers. Some critics have pointed out that the Overlook's layout is actually a reflection of the maze, or that Kubrick made the hotel's interior layout inconsistent as a way to make the hotel feel dynamic or alive. Intentional continuity "mistakes" can achieve the same effects.

The Shining is a psychological horror film about a flawed, average man who is transformed into a brutal murderer by cabin fever. It's not about the holocaust or faking the moon landing film. There may be references to Native Americans in the film, and I'm not denying that those references may mirror a statement that Kubrick was making about the past. However, I also don't believe that the entire film was intended as a metaphor for anything greater than the battle between good and evil, or sanity and insanity. If you have anything in between your ears, you'll regret spending 102 minutes of your time on this garbage.