Room 237 2012

Remember in your high school English class you would read a ten line poem about a horse and then spend two weeks analyzing it, culminating in an 5 page essay where you argue the horse represents Columbus, it's hay represents atrocities against Native Americans, and his owner the King and Queen of Spain? This is that experience put to film.

Danny wearing an Apollo sweater? That symbolizes how Kubrick faked the Moon landing. Source you ask? Super reliable guy who says he has friends that say he's right and the government is tracking him.

Redrum and Danny hiding his tracks by walking backwards? That means Kubrick wants you to watch the movie in reverse at the same time as watching it forwards so you'll notice that sometimes peoples faces slightly overlap and Jack's name in the starting credits lines up with his picture at the end of the movie. We'll just ignore how the picture takes up the entire screen and the credits scroll up so at some point they will be in the middle of the screen.

However when you go back and read that poem about the horse? Turns out it's just about a horse because horses are cool. Apollo sweater? Space is cool. I'm sure if Kubrick put Danny in a T-Rex sweater he would have claimed Kubrick knew dinosaurs aren't real. Redrum? Sounds cool, spells murder backwards, and is easy for a six year old to say. Danny hiding his tracks by walking backwards? A smart move by Danny.

In the end sometimes a horse poem is just about a horse. Do yourself a favor, avoid this and rewatch The Shining, read it's Wikipedia page, and a 10 minute YouTube video about cool things throughout the movie.

People are crazy. At first I was laughing at the insanity, but then it started to get depressing that there are those out there that have insane stretches of logic to get a ridiculous answer they want to hear. (insert political joke)

Of everything talked about in here, pretty much all of them are simply tiny continuity errors blown up to mean things about the moon or real life ghosts or something. There is only one thing that I agree with, and that is the Native American link. I agree, the concept of the haunting starting with Native Americans that were slaughtered on the hotel's site makes perfect sense. Notice how that is simply a plot theory, not a real life message theory.

It is fun hearing these people talk, but I do think the doc is missing a big element by not showing them. The style here is that we never understand exactly who is talking, what they look like, who they are. Nor do we get a narrator or idea of how this info was gathered.

This is a pretty big loss if you ask me. They cut from one voice, to another, and then maybe back to that original person. Really not a great way for following what the train of thought is like per person. As much as I disagree with all of them, I think that lumps everyone together as crazy instead of letting you know exactly what kind of crazy each person is. You're unfairly taking away their argument logic (no matter how stupid).

I'd say watch this while you're doing something that doesn't require your deep focus. You only need that focus when watching The Shinning for government conspiracies.