Room 237 (2013)

You won't be disappointed!

Thanks for the memories!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

For being a documentary about one of my all time favorite movies, I think that this is a fairly made one. The reason is because it does not only give me more and more hints and understanding of what The Shining means other than just being a classic horror film about a family that spends the majority of the time inside an isolated hotel, but I also learned new things about the movie that I have never ever thought about or discovered until now. If you have watched the actual movie a dozen times just like I have, you will probably go into it with all these new layers in your mind and with all the footage you have seen in this documentary. I am in awe of how massive the fanbase have become over the decades with all of these conspiracy theories, speculations, and confessions ect. I am not really able to explain how much this movie has impacted me, because everything I witnessed on the screen for the very first time is something that I probably will never forget. Overall I think this is a pretty decent and watchable documentary for everyone that have watched this movie multiple times and even more for that matter. It also contains some footage of Kubrick's other popular films like 2001 for instance, in which The Shining has some cool and interesting similarities with that movie. I expected a little more out of this documentary though, and feel like it could have been much more.

Awful 1 out of 10 stars would go negative if could, dumb commentary with nothing to do with the shining.

This is quite the film. If you, too, are fascinated with the Shining, and you want to hear extreme fans talk about their extreme fan theories, this is the movie for you. It's important to note that this film never claims to be the definitive interpretation of the Shining, but rather observations and personal interpretations. Some of my favorite observations include: The Shining is about the story of the Minotaur; The Shining is the foil of 2001: a Space Odyssey; and Kubrick was confessing he was involved in faking the moon landing footage. This final claim was backed up by the idea that the room number, 237, was chosen because the moon is 237,000 miles from the Earth (even though the real value is closer to 239,000). In the door to Room 237, there is a key that has a little flap with the words Room No. 237. The commentator stated that the only words that could be made using those same letters are Moon and Room, indicating a confession that Kubrick was involved in faking the footage. I suppose the commentator forgot the words or, on, moo, nor, mono, norm, morn, moor, or moron. So, take this film with a grain of salt (or several). If you're looking for "The Shining: explained," you're going to be woefully disappointed. If you're looking for a couple of fan theories that will tickle your brain and that you can kind of chuckle at, or if you're looking to make fun of fan obsession, there's something in this film for you. If you really want to learn more about The Shining, you can look up information on Youtube, or watch the film again and analyze it yourself!

Other hidden meanings in "The Shining": 1. In the gin commercial, the ice cube to the right clearly shows the Secret Service man driving JFK's limo in Dallas turning around and shooting the president. 2. A frozen-frame blow up of the poster to the left of the faux skier one reveals a photo of the box where President and Mrs. Lincoln were watching "An American Cousin" on the night the president was assassinated. To the extreme left you can see a myopic 2nd assassin firing a Derringer that missed Mrs. Lincoln, the second must-have target. 3. In the opening credits of "The Shining", as soon as Stanley Kubrick's name scrolls upwards out of the frame, in addition to his airbrushed photo skillfully placed in the clouds, and to its immediate left, is the right earlobe of Jon Voight, Kubrick's first choice to play Jack. 4. The original sneak prevue release, shown in a theater in Honduras, had Danny carrying a ripe banana as he fled into the maze. He gets corned by his homicidal father and obsessively eats the banana, tossing the peel in front of him. His father raises the ax, steps forward and slips on the banana peel, hitting his head fatally on a partially obscured obsidian bust of Stephen King. This ending was booed by the attending Hondurans who subsequently burned down the theater to protest the racial profiling of bananas. Kubrick then re-shot the ending we all know. 5. As a movie running 1 hour and 42 minutes, the laughs for this commentator stopped coming after 20 minutes. Picture was far too long to sustain a light-weight comedy.