Room 237

Dir. Rodney Ascher. 2012, 102 mins. DCP. Stanley Kubrick’s highly anticipated Stephen King adaptation The Shining received a wide release in the summer of 1980. The reviews were mixed, but the box office, after a slow start, eventually picked up. End of story? Hardly. In the 30 years since the film’s release, a considerable cult of Shining devotees emerged, fans who claim to have decoded the film’s secret messages addressing everything from the genocide of Native Americans to a range of government conspiracies. Rodney Ascher’s wry and provocative documentary Room 237 fuses fact and fiction through interviews with cultists and scholars, creating a kaleidoscopic deconstruction of Kubrick’s still-controversial classic.