A Non Review of Room 237 (2012) New York Film Festival 2012

You’ll forgive me for burying this piece in an in between slot but I simply want to note that the film has been seen and it has kind of left us underwhelmed.

Room 237 was a huge hit at Sundance. The film is a look at the crazy theories that have sprung up concerning Stanley Kubrick’s version of the Shining. As you know earlier this year I reviewed the wonderfully wacky Kubrick’s Odyssey about how Kubrick hid clues to his faking the moon landings in the film. This is a more broad spectrum look at a number of theories about the film from Native American Indian genocide to the Holocaust to other things, and it does cover the moon landings as well.

As much as the film was hyped the film doesn’t really live up to it.

The problem for me is that the film doesn’t tell me anything I haven’t run across before. I had heard bits and pieces of the various theories before and I saw the earlier film which covers the moon landings in detail so this is hardly new. To be perfectly honest the film couldn't old my attention after four previous movies, and four hours sleep the night before. I wandered out early.

I spoke with a couple of other people who have seen the film and were less than thrilled. While I shouldn’t go by what other people say, I did have extensive discussions about the film before I saw it so what was said played into my feelings for the film. Our own John DiBello asked why the film made no effort to debunk or look into the theories. He also was underwhelmed since he had never seen the Kubrick film so chunks of this documentary was completely lost on him. For him the film seemed to be made for a self-selecting audience. Good friend of Unseen Films Hubert Vigilla from Flixist raised the interesting point as to why no effort was made to have the various people either talk to each other or discuss the other ideas (his review can be found here)

I’m underwhelmed (and very tired) and John’s underwhelmed and the result is we’re not officially reviewing the film…. At least right now.

The plan as of right now is to catch the film when it opens in theaters October 26th again and then put up a real review them.

As for me, my attitude would be to skip the festival screening and see this at a cheaper price when in plays in three weeks at the IFC Center