With only two features and one short, Rodney Ascher has established himself as a documentarian focused on the communal aspect of horror. His first documentary, the short film The S from Hell, played testimonies by people who were terrified by the 1964 Screen Gems logo at the end of various TV shows. He followed that up with his feature debut Room 237, about people with wild conspiracy theories about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. With both of these films, Ascher explored how a piece of media could conjure up such strange and specific reactions. What is it about The Shining that makes people speculate so wildly about hidden meaning? Why did a TV logo strike fear into the hearts of so many children? With The Nightmare, Ascher sets his sights on a similar idea, but this time he’s effectively transitioned from niche topics to something far more universal.
The Nightmare isn’t just about scary dreams. Ascher delves into the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, where people find their bodies frozen while some sort of demonic entity (or entities) terrorize them. Each person has their own unique experience getting scared senseless. Sometimes a person might only feel an evil presence around them. Other times shadow people or demonic creatures stand directly over them, looking like they’re moments away from attacking. Ascher’s subjects have a large supply of anecdotes about the times they’ve suffered from sleep paralysis, with some of them so strange it’s hard not to get creeped out.
Ascher doesn’t feel the need to delve into more than what the eight people he profiles tell him. It’s easy to want to hear from a medical professional or a neurologist to learn about what might cause such a horrifying event. Ascher doesn’t really see the need for it. Anyone who’s experienced sleep paralysis knows how vivid they are. Almost all of the interview subjects believe with absolute certainty that what they felt and saw was real, and it’s hard to argue against them. Much like The S from Hell and Room 237, Ascher is more interested in relating these subjective experiences, using filmmaking techniques to place viewers in the same mindset as his subjects.
This is where Ascher takes a big formal departure from his previous works. In Room 237, Ascher only played audio of his interviews over footage of The Shining, and by obsessively poring over sequences frame by frame it made it easy to understand where some of the out there theories were coming from. The Nightmare actually shows the faces of who Ascher interviews, usually shooting them at nighttime in their own bedroom. This is the first half of the film, with the other half dedicated to highly stylistic re-enactments of the different nightmares. The on-camera interviews feel necessary because they give these nightmares an authenticity that makes them all the more unsettling. Hearing about them is one thing; actually seeing the conviction and emotions from everyone as they speak makes it easy to understand why they’re so convinced that what happened to them wasn’t a delusion.
The Nightmare’s second half, where Ascher attempts to remake these stories into something cinematic, is where the film’s problems lie. Cinematographer Bridger Nielson makes these sequences look terrific, along with the talking head interviews, but they’re too cheesy to actually generate something as terrifying as what’s being told. Hearing someone talk about being paralyzed in their bed while large, black orbs start floating towards them sounds creepy, especially with the precise descriptions; seeing an actor cower as two poorly rendered CGI blobs float above them winds up being more of a distraction than a means of accentuating the horror. Dreams come from the imagination, and it might have been better to leave things there than try to represent them on-screen. At the end of the day, nothing will be as scary as what we conjure up in our own minds.
While these re-enactments don’t generate as much fear as simply seeing and hearing the real people tell their story as they experienced it, Ascher does bring up a fascinating idea through these sleek representations. All of them are shot through highly conventional and familiar horror techniques: canted angles, shadows, jump scares, and an ominous score. A scene early on has some people afflicted with sleep paralysis bringing up films like Insidious to show how elements come directly from common imagery associated with sleep paralysis and nightmares (one of the film’s lighter moments comes when one person praises Insidious for how it portrayed nightmares, but still found it to be a disappointment when compared to the real thing). These scenes make it easy to ponder just how much horror films and nightmares feed off each other, how one inspires the other in a sort of strange cyclical pattern.
But Ascher isn’t all about making a thought-provoking documentary on what scares us. The Nightmare obviously wants to scare people, and even though Ascher can be hit or miss on the recreations, he does have a good share of unnerving moments courtesy of his subjects (I’ve avoided explaining too much about them here since it’s no fun to ruin the surprise). At one point someone mentions how episodes began to develop from simply explaining sleep paralysis to a friend. “Kind of like an STD, a sleep transmitted disease,” he says, and that’s where The Nightmare offers something far more wickedly fun than The S from Hell or Room 237. In those films it was easy to watch these groups of people with a bemused detachment. In The Nightmare Ascher suggests that, by watching this film and becoming aware of its subject matter, you might have unwittingly let this phenomenon into your own life. Just try having a good night’s sleep with that idea in your head.
Originally published on April 27, 2015 as part of our Hot Docs coverage.
]]>It has been over 30 years since Stanley Kubrick blessed cinema with his Stephen King adaptation of The Shining but many people are still debating what the hidden meanings behind the film are. That is where the documentary Room 237 by Rodney Ascher comes in to play. The documentary obsessively explores several different theories behind the film. Some seemed like far stretches but at the same time pointed out some interesting references to make their case. If you are infatuated with Stanley Kubrick or just simply love The Shining then you will no doubt find the documentary interesting.
The first thing you will probably noticed about the documentary is that it is done entirely with voice overs. None of the people talking or being interviewed are actually shown. Instead, everything that they are describing is used with source material, mostly scenes from The Shinning as well as other Kubrick films such as Eyes Wide Shut and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This makes for somewhat of an awkward experience that might be best described as unconventional.
One man (Bill Blakemore) is convinced that the film is largely about the genocide of the American Indians. He points out that there are many references to Indians in the film, from paintings on the wall to a baking powder can in the stock room that features an Indian on it. Then he later points out that The Shining mentions that the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground which could explain the famous blood from the elevator scene.
Jay Weidner explains that his background of being a historian with a focus in Germany has him to believe there was a lot of sub-text in the film that referenced the holocaust. This theory first came into his mind when he saw that Jack Nicholson’s typewriter was a German model. He mentions that it may seem arbitrary but brings up a good point saying that nothing in Kubrick’s film is arbitrary. Then seeing the number 42 appear in the film multiple times was the other big clue as it was the year the Nazi’s did a lot of terrible things.
One of my favorite topics that is examined is the little boy riding his tricycle. There are three different scenes in which the camera follows the little boy on his tricycle. The first one is a rather simple loop that is one continuous tracking shot. The second shot following riding is slightly more complex on the route that he takes before stopping to stare at Room 237. It is not a simple loop as before and he is on the second level of the hotel. The final shot of following him around is the most bizarre as it starts out on one level but then cuts to him riding upstairs that sort of links the previous shots together. The documentary explores more in depth meanings to what exactly could be happening metaphorically for the boy on those rides.
Conspiracy theories will love this film, in one theory someone links the Apollo 11 fake moon landings to the work of Kubrick. It seems a bit over the top but it was still fun to hear. The man describes how 2001: A Space Odyssey was funded by the government to ultimately stage the moon landing. He goes into some detail about how this relates to Kubrick not being able to tell his wife and linking that to The Shining. He points out that the boy had an Apollo 11 sweater on in the famous scene of the ball rolling up to him while he is playing. The theory comes to an end when he makes the argument that the real reason why Kubrick changed the room number from 217 in the book to 237 is that 237,000 miles has long thought to be the distance from earth to the moon.
What I can to realize from watching this documentary is that The Shining is so complex and ambiguous, it can really have an infinite amount of different sub-text and meanings behind it. If you look hard and close enough you could probably make a case for just about anything you want. I think that only speaks to how powerful, brilliant and complex of a film The Shining really is.
While Room 237 is a compelling documentary that searches for deep (sometimes too deep) hidden meanings behind the mastermind of Kubrick and his films, it does not offer anything but theories. These theories range from completely fascinating to borderline ridiculous. The film feels most like commentary you find on a special feature DVD. Though Room 237 definitely makes you appreciate Kubrick’s work, the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures is a lot more effective. You walk away with some possible hidden meanings of the film but ultimately with a strong desire to watch The Shining right away.
]]>It’s been over thirty years since Stanley Kubrick gave us the fantastic horror film The Shining, which still ranks up as one of my all-time favorite horror films. After all these years the film is still being studied and debated by scholars and hardcore fans. Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 explores theories about the hidden meanings behind The Shining.
Room 237 is appropriately named after the special room at the Overlook Hotel featured in The Shining. This documentary will feature five different points of view of the film from professors as well as authors. Even though the trailer does not offer much for details about the documentary, it does its job by making you excited to see what it has to offer about the mesmerizing 1980 horror film.
Room 237 is currently playing at festivals including CIFF.
Watch the official trailer for Room 237:
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