REVIEW: ROOM 237 SHINES A LIGHT ON OBSESSIVES.

What you see here is what you see from most conspiracy theorists: an attempt to impose order on randomness. Like those obsessed with Dark Side of Oz—the theory that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is secretly a soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz—our Shining fans are trying to make the world cohere and use coincidences, real and imagined, to make it so.

You see similar efforts when our speakers try to excuse random continuity errors—chairs that go missing from shot to shot, that sort of thing—as deliberate ploys by Kubrick to add deeper meaning to the proceedings. I can see some of those prone to conspiracism looking at these sequences and sagely nodding their head. I can also see Stanley Kubrick, a noted obsessive in his own right, watching Room 237 and muttering under his breath “Shit. I thought I caught all those screwups.”

What you find time and again are Ascher’s interview subjects finding themselves in Kubrick’s work: consider the professor of history who focuses on the Holocaust reading the film as a comment on the Nazi’s killing of the Jews, or the man who lived near Lake Calumet deciding that the inclusion of Calumet baking powder in two key shots means that it’s a film about the slaughter of the Indians.

Read the whole thing. I know I enjoyed the review, if only to point out to my wife that there are far crazier Kubrick obsessives than me.

Related: Scooby-Doo with better CGI: Shining “sort-of-sequel” Doctor Sleep reviewed.