Director: Rodney Ascher
Oh, you’re a big fan of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? Prepare to see the iconic director’s Stephen King adaptation in all new, mind-bending ways, thanks to documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher’s bewildering, deconstructive knockout Room 237. Using the committed, albeit seemingly delirious, voiceovers from five Shining obsessives, Ascher’s endlessly fascinating film pulls apart every minute detail within Kubrick’s horror masterwork to present a series of crackpot theories that, by the picture’s end, actually sound probable.
As in, The Shining was Kubrick’s way to atone for staging the Apollo 11 moon landing; or, Kubrick’s masked commentary on both the Holocaust and the genocide of Native Americans in our beloved U.S.A.—sounds batty, right? With Ascher’s stellar craftsmanship and slick editing to thank, the strangely hypnotic Room 237 begs to differ.