‘…while none of the theories offered up here are convincing, Ascher’s film forces us to look at the wealth of strange detail in one film, and consider why so many diverse people have been fascinated by The Shining's elusive, elliptical content…’

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 30, 2024

I found Rodney Ascher’s doc an enjoyable excuse to look at a lot of great Kubrick shots in quick succession while having a familiar film shaken up, however unconvincingly...

| Jan 24, 2023

It's a compellingly made documentary in visual terms.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2022

I doubt any two people will have the exact same Shining experience and nor will two people have the same Room 237 experience. It's a mystery, but one that will keep you thinking for weeks longer than you ever thought you would.

| Mar 17, 2021

It has something to say about obsession & perhaps serves as a warning: look too hard at something, and you may go slightly mad.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2021

Room 237 is a fascinating study of what fans of the film believe, and it's an entertaining look at that world-especially if you're not immersed it in it everyday.

| Mar 3, 2019

Combining an intelligent and imaginative use of achieve footage, rambling voice-overs and animation, Room 237 is an intriguing labyrinth of abstract hypothesis interwoven with intermittent success.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2019

Room 237 (the movie title referring to one of the rooms in The Shining's fictional Overlook Hotel) is a profoundly vibrant and unconventional documentary that is playfully mysterious, odd, and responsive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2018

From his artistic eye to layers of meaning, Kubrick was an auteur whose works have stood the test of time and will continue to challenge viewers for years to come.

| Oct 25, 2018

The people behind the theories in Room 237 all share an intense capacity to infer connections. What is so maddening is that those connections are clearly there, though their significance is ultimately hidden.

| Oct 17, 2018

It gives us a safe version of the paranoid search for meaning to which we're all susceptible.

| May 17, 2018

The presentation is all fairly straight-faced and largely without comment, with only mischievous uses of accompanying footage serving as a deadpan riposte to some of the more obviously insane theories.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 19, 2017

Room 237 isn't about The Shining or the Holocaust or the slaughter of Native Americans or the moon landing. It's about people finding order in chaos.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 14, 2016

Do the Kabbalist readings or wild free associations that Room 237 celebrates improve The Shining? Let's say that they create a parallel text: Lost in the Overlook, in search of the overlooked.

| Dec 31, 2015

"The Shining" is the perfect launching pad for a movie about obsessive film theorists, because Kubrick attracts theories like lint, and this film is perhaps his most stubbornly mystifying work.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 15, 2015

Don't watch this film and expect an authoritative critical analysis of the film; watch it and explore the distorting, drug-like pull that some art can exert on its audience.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 24, 2015

Room 237 is about bringing a text to life through an active, prolonged, playful, or even tortured relationship to it. It's a document of immersive obsession.

| Original Score: B | Jun 2, 2014

Inelegant in the way it assembles all this stuff ... but anyone who's ever obsessed over the subtext of a beloved movie will find it amusing.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 12, 2013

A curious and entertaining documentary.

| Jun 12, 2013

An intellectual exercise, and an entertaining one, especially for those who don't want to label The Shining as just a ghost story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2013