Room 237 [2013] - LetterboxD Review

Link to Original Review

Sometimes you can read TOO much into a movie but that's not to say that the hardcore fanaticism on display in Room 237 isn't fascinating in itself!

Room 237 is a purely visual documentary exploring the themes and hidden (and sometimes obvious) meanings on display in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

I remember watching The Shining for the first time when I was a lot younger and being absolutely terrified by it. The inversion of horror cliche of light and dark, the slow, deliberate pacing, the gradual build up and decent into madness... The location of the Overlook Hotel and, in a similar way to Hitchcock's Lifeboat, the freedom juxtaposed with the claustrophobia of the great outdoors and being trapped in the great wide open. The metaphor of the hedge maze... of being trapped. Even as a kid, the symbolism on display in The Shining was very obvious and brilliantly realised.

Whilst Room 237 certainly offers some fascinating perspectives on the movie, that 2001 and The Shining are proof that the moon landing was faked being the most curious and probably outlandish, it does also deliver these opinions with a restrained but obvious passion and love. Some of their ideas are interesting. Some, I just didn't see which ultimately is what sets Room 237 out from the crowd. Very rarely does a "making of" documentary get into this level of detail on a movie. With the odd exception, movie analysis to this degree is usually left in the lecture theatre of the bar at the local arthouse cinema and for that alone, Room 237 should be commended. This is one for both fans of The Shining, fans of Stanley Kubrick and fans of cinema. It's also one for people who "want to believe", who swear blind that the moon landing was faked and who find meanings and patterns in places where there just isn't anything there, but you could certainly make the argument that Kubrick certainly weaves a rich enough tapestry on any of his movies that there is enough there to be able to go into the level of detail that Room 237 does.

Its certainly to be commended that a movie like Room 237 exists because it brings to the fore the idea of not just film criticism, but the love of cinema and specifically the love of a single piece of entertainment that can be read so many different ways and produce so many different opinions and ideas. Room 237 is in many ways a fitting tribute to one of the greatest horror movies of all time, it's only fault, by its very own nature, is that sometimes, its ideas just seem a little bit too preposterous to take seriously.

I rated this film 4 out of 5!