Room 237 movie review & film summary (2013)

Five off-screen narrators pitch various interpretations of "The Shining," accompanied by stock footage, illustrative recreations and clips from Kubrick's filmography. For Bill Blakemore, the subject of Kubrick's "Masterpiece of Modern Horror" is the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans by white European settlers; for Geoffrey Cocks, it's about the Holocaust in Nazi-dominated Europe; for Juli Kearns, it's an exploration of an impossible, Escher-like maze called the Overlook Hotel.

John Fell Ryan has discovered some interesting juxtapositions that occur if you project two prints of "The Shining" on top of each other at the same time, with one running forward and the other running backward. Jay Weidner, who characterizes himself as a "conspiracy hunter," insists "The Shining" is Kubrick's belated, life-risking confession/apology for faking the television footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing on the sets for "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the behest of the U.S. government.

"Room 237" could easily be (mis)taken for a comedic satire of fervent movie-geekery if the theories it presents — some more cockeyed than others — hadn't appeared on the Internet years ago. That's where Ascher found the inspirations for his documentary.

It starts off with a visual trick: In a digitally modified clip from Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999), Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) stands outside the Sonata Cafe in Greenwich Village, which is actually a set at Pinewood Studios near London (which is the source of a little in-joke: The location is identified as "EUROPE"). But instead of inspecting a display featuring his old friend, pianist Nick Nightingale, he's looking at promotional materials for "The Shining." You could say that "Room 237" is based on a similar illusion, getting us to see things in a movie that either aren't there or aren't what they appear to be.

Let's rewind: Back in 2010, Ascher made a notably similar short film called "The S From Hell," a parodic inquiry into the off-the-wall proposition that the Screen Gems logo, which appeared after episodes of popular TV series such as "Bewitched" and "The Partridge Family" from 1965 to 1974, was so frightening, it traumatized a generation of unsuspecting children. Maybe you don't recall being terrified by this or any other logo? Me, neither. But we could've repressed it.

The goofy premise of "The S from Hell" is no less unlikely than some of the blarney put forward in "Room 237." The movie doesn't judge the relative merits of its subjects' opinions, probably because that might be construed as favoritism. That's understandable. But as a result, the movie lacks examples of sound critical thinking. All we have here are do-it-yourself interactive fan games.

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