Room 237

Running time: 102 minutes

Genre-blurring shorts director Rodney Ascher follows the viral success of his 2010 Sundance debut, THE S FROM HELL, with a visual bibliography based on Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING.

Having interviewed Kubrick devotees such as veteran foreign correspondent Bill Blakemore, filmmaker/alchemist Jay Weidner and idiosyncratic novelist Juli Kearns, the movie forensically deconstructs Kubrick’s classic psycho-horror film, and often to mischievous effect. Citing Kubrick’s interest in the Holocaust, his supposed involvement in faking America’s first moon-landing and any manner of fascinating if not fanciful claims, Ascher uses footage borrowed from both Kubrick’s movies and elsewhere, stop-motion, slo-mo and much ingenious montage to emphasise them.

Often clearly playful, sometimes thoughtful and even convincing, the net result is always highly watchable and a must for anyone interested in Kubrick and his masterwork.

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