Review of Room 237 (2012) by Cameron M — 15 Mar 2013

To enjoy a documentary like this, you have to enjoy two additional things as well, which, yes, makes the audience selective, but I don't recall ever seeing a documentary meant to target everyone. This one just happened to fit right in with my interests. This is a film, in which, for one hundred devilishly exciting minutes, multiple historians and film experts explain in detail, their conspiracy theories revolving around Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece, "The Shining." The documentary is unique in the way that rather than cutting away to various interviews and including voice-overs, it is purely voice-overs, and the visuals are purely of the film. Some sequences are played at full-speed, others frame-by-frame- hell- in one scenario, the beginning and end sequences are shown, but they are interlaced with the respective opposite ends of the film- in reverse! And the cinephiles narrating have actually found patterns in the visuals when playing the film that way. It really is mind-blowing what these guys come up with.

Now don't get me wrong, I found this film interesting. I'm not; however, professing head-over-heels documentary love for it. I did have an issue with Room 237, and a fairly big one too. After all the theories shot at us, all the notions we're forced to take in at lightening speed, there's no conclusion. The film winds up being a bottle rocket of ideas, yes fantastic ideas, but the ideas never go anywhere. They're instead left for us to dwell upon, and perhaps that was Rodney Ascher's idea and choice in directing the film. I see the logic, and I understand why Ascher would've done it the way he did. I just don't like it very much. I need some wrap-up, at least throw in a curveball at the end. But, sadly, there's no curveball in Room 237. There is; however, 95 mile an hour fastball, after 95 mile an hour fastball, after 95 mile an hour fastball, and you get the point. Ascher's film is definitely not one to miss, especially if you're a Stanley Kubrick fan. The ideas in his film are juicy and thought-provoking; I just wish they'd all gone somewhere, instead of just collapsing in a spectacularly glorious heap.