Ahead of a pristine re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s cerebral horror masterpiece THE SHINING, Rodney Ascher’s ROOM 237 is a lively documentary that gives voice to a variety of remarkable theories behind the film’s conception; theories that call into question the great director’s true intentions.

Latching on to the film’s cult status, which has grown since the divided reaction from critics and audiences in 1980), Ascher pieces together five unseen theorists who insist that Kubrick was actually attempting to do much more than merely creating an adaptation of a popular story. Their models of understanding, in turn imaginative, insightful, baffling and obtuse, are spread out over nine carefully constructed segments.

ROOM 237 offers a fresh, somewhat snickering commentary on authorship and elucidation, treating the plethora of ideas and theories with unmediated respect…

The original text is picked apart in a mixture of ways, from frame by frame analyses to indicative visualisations of the Overlook Hotel – in particular its oddly unmatchable blueprints, which are highlighted by the classic steadicam shots of Danny’s frantic riding of his Big Wheel around the desolate corridors. ROOM 237 offers a fresh, somewhat snickering commentary on authorship and elucidation, treating the plethora of ideas and theories with unmediated respect. By tinkering with cinematic form, retooling footage from Kubrick’s previous films (and a host of others) and visually dissecting key scenes and images to monotonous and humorous effect, Ascher has created an appealing illumination of apparently decipherable codes and hidden meanings.

The various perspectives range from THE SHINING as a simulation of the genocide of Native Americans to a broader representation of Nazism and the holocaust, and Kubrick is even accused of helping to stage the Apollo moon landing by using the front screen projection technique found in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. But perhaps the film’s most interesting methodology is that of attentive analysis. This is fastidious cinematic academia, a delineation of the ways these clearly obsessive fanatics extract esoteric subtexts from a film that, seen through different eyes, may be nothing more than puzzlingly ambiguous drivel.

Room 237 emphasises how fascinating THE SHINING is as both a highly composed horror film and an ontological demarcation of history and the world we live in…

If the vast amount of scrutiny is to be believed (as well as the rationalised continuity errors and fact checking, which are all given subjective clout), then ROOM 237 emphasises how fascinating THE SHINING is, both as a highly composed horror film and an ontological demarcation of history and the world we live in: all from a director who is said to have been “bored” after making BARRY LYNDON. The arcane notions highlighted in this celebration of cinema and Kubrick may or may not resonate, depending on your relationship with the original text, but one thing is for sure: you will never watch THE SHINING the same way again.