This film portrays the hidden meanings and clues behind Stanley Kubrick's only horror film, "The Shining", based on the best selling book by Stephen King, and why this movie still continues to baffle and confuse purists. This movie is mostly full of interviews, movie clips, and other stuff. If you like the shining, then you'll like this movie. Worth a rental.

This film is an epic thesis on storytelling, adaptation, and film-making. If you have read the King novel, then you know that a key component to the story is the Minotaur theme. It's not an accident that Kubrick invented a hedge maze scene for the final act... the book manifests Danny's clairvoyant visions of his mad father as a Minotaur stalking him in some contrived labyrinth of hallways in the Overlook hotel.So, that said; the moon landing stuff is trash, but nonetheless entertaining; Any claims about Kubrick being involved in some sort of conspiracy have been more than debunked. However, we know that Kubrick is always trying to tell us more than what's on screen...The theory that Kubrick's The Shining is a metaphor for the genocide of American natives seems absurd at first, but I believe it is absolutely borne out by facts raised in Room 237. It is verifiable that King was not pleased with the screenplay adaptation, and the film actually expresses this by emphasizing the *yellow* bug that is trashed roadside, instead of the red bug in the book. But if we take out the moon landing crap and assume that Kubrick is approaching this project from the native American angle, so many pieces fall into place.Room 237 exposits this concept ad nauseam, but let's simply consider the most iconic scene of the film, where Jack is taunting Wendy as she threatens him with the bat: the camera takes great care to ensure that the aboriginal tapestry that serves as decoration for the great hall stays framed as Jack ascends the staircase (where the shot is a peculiar over-the-shoulder 1/3 take). So we're left to simply ask, *why* was this Kubrick's approach? (and this is exactly the type of question that Room 237 engages emphatically) All of this is to say: Room 237 provides enough insight regarding the themes of the book (Minotaur/labyrinth) while illustrating Kubrick's own departure from the source text (aboriginal genocide). It is hard to reconcile the changes made from the book to film without these interpretations.again, CAVEAT:The moon landing stuff is bizarre; I think this can be explained by confirmation bias of those intrigued by Kubrick's proficiency in filmmaking, being contemporaries of breakthrough techniques used during the filming of 2001. It's unfortunate the filmmakers felt compelled to include this aspect, as it obfuscates what I consider to be serious narrative themes suggested by Kubrick.So, I'm proffering an 8/10, given that the viewer has both seen the original film and read the novel... And as someone who is a rabid fan of both, Room 237's peculiar allure has stayed with me for months after viewing.

while this is ostensibly a documentary on the classic film The Shining,it's really just a big conspiracy theory.i won't say on what subject,because I don't want to spoil anything.the the film is very subjective.so not everyone will agree with the filmmakers point of view.i personally thought they were reaching a lot in some of the conclusions they came to.nevertheless,i did find it compelling and engaging.i don't think I would be in too much of a hurry to watch it again,though,unlike the actual movie The Shining.as an aside,i just recently watched the 1997 remake of The Shining in one sitting.all four and a half hours of it,with no commercials.this version starred Rebecca De Mornay and Steven Weber.anyway,back to room 237.i enjoyed it while I was watching it,but my interest in it has waned over time.if you're just looking for some time to kill,you could do worse than this film.for me,Room 237 is a 5/10

Room 237 is a great example of what happens when a state, and even a system, is in a crisis. What this entire film comes down to is that director Stanley Kubrick left hidden messages in his later films, especially in The Shining (1980). This may be true because filmmakers sometimes do this in order to show to the public what they really think or feel. As knowledgeable people know, there's no real freedom of speech. Everything that's made in Hollywood, and in the West in general, contains propaganda. Everything is controlled by the ruling class. The problem with Room 237 is that it's also propaganda. It offers the opinions of several people. These people are said to be Kubrick enthusiasts, and they kind of narrate while we're shown footage from Kubrick's films. The problem with this is that we don't find out who these people are and what their intentions are. Even their faces aren't shown. Why are these people saying what they're saying? Room 237 doesn't tell us. So, it turns out that the goal of this film isn't to educate but to provoke. What we're told in Room 237 is highly questionable. A bit of it may be true, but we, the viewers, have no way of knowing. We don't have access to such information. One thing that's clear to me, however, is that Room 237 is propaganda made by people that serve a faction of the Anglo-American ruling class. Ordinary people often make the mistake of thinking that the ruling class of a country is united and is of one mind. The reality is that the ruling class is composed of factions, each with its own interests. They agree about some things, and they disagree about other things. These different factions try to rally ordinary people to their cause, to their interests, by releasing propaganda through films, books, music, news and any other medium. So, when, for example, election time comes, a faction wants people to vote for the candidate that it's supporting. Each faction would like to have their own man or woman in power. The factions especially begin to disagree and even fight when there's a crisis, like the capitalist economic depression that began in the West in 2008. Based on this, I can tell which faction is behind Room 237. For example, in the film, it's claimed that the Apollo moon landings were faked. At least the footage was faked. This is probably true, but why are we being told this? Is it because the filmmakers are nice? No, it's because they want to shake up the situation and discredit another, dominant, faction of the ruling class. Ordinary people don't have access to secret information about the Apollo program, and the only reason why, in the last few decades, we've been seeing reports about the moon landings being faked is because ruling class factions are disagreeing. So, in this film, we're told about the genocide of Native Americans, the Nazis and other things that we often hear about in the West, but with a spin that's a bit different. It's meant to provoke and make us question what we know. But a lot of what's said in Room 237 is lies. As I've already mentioned, the goal of Room 237 isn't to educate but to provoke. Right after we're told about the Nazis, we're told that Joseph Stalin allegedly starved 3 million people in Western Ukraine. This is not true. It's an obvious capitalist lie. And Stalin never said that the death of one man is a tragedy and that the death of millions is a statistic. It's just another capitalist lie. So, why are we getting these anti-communist lies in Room 237? It's because even the faction that got this film made doesn't want a real revolution, a communist revolution, to happen in the USA. I'm thinking that this faction is the same one that promotes so-called conservative propagandists like Alex Jones, Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart. Half the time these people talk about liberty and the free market, and the other half they dedicate to lying about communism, the Soviet Union, and especially Joseph Stalin. They push the interests of their faction of the ruling class, but they also don't want for a communist or a socialist revolution to happen, one that would sweep away the entire capitalist ruling class. This is the faction that wants to lower wages in the USA and to destroy the welfare state. Sure, some of these people may be against America's wars, but not because they're nice. They just want to rally as many dupes as possible to their cause, to their political candidates from the Republican Party.