Review of Room 237 (2012) by Mike W — 05 Apr 2013

Nearly unwatchable, ROOM 237 feels like one of those badly made conspiracy films you find on YouTube, somewhere between the faked moon landing and 9/11 truthers. By microanalysing everything in THE SHINING as having some profound alternate meaning, suddenly the film is about everything from the Native American slaughter by the "white man", to the Holocaust, and everything in between.

We never see who is being interviewed, and their anonymous names hold no weight or meaning - it's like a Craigslist ad saying "Did you get any hidden messages from THE SHINING?" was posted and all the people who responded got into the film.

Certainly there are some interesting ideas, but the presentation is so amateurish that it's hard to sit through this film. It feels like it was edited in iMovie, with terrible looped music tracked in by Garage Band, and half of the video footage being horribly compressed low resolution YouTube video rips, interspersed with HD film footage.

If it was a polished documentary that didn't take such a wack-job conspiracy-theorist approach to it, then it might be worth checking out. But don't waste your time on this. Next up, look for a film called DELTA 88 which explores the hidden mythologies found throughout the films of Sam Raimi.