Room 237 is a documentary that plumbs the depths of The Shining, using various people’s voice-overs to guide the viewer through interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1980 horror film. I have no real thoughts on it; I love The Shining, but have avoided Room 237 mostly by nature of having heard about so much of it secondhand. But Pitch Perfect 237 is the sweet nexus of truth that we should all succumb to this holiday season, letting its light guide our way to 2025 and perfect goofs.
I won’t spoil it for you; it’s right there embedded at the top of the post, and I believe you came here not in search of some YouTube video to abate some holiday season slump, but rather, to really engage with something. And what better than a movie that pulls back the layers on acclaimed cultural juggernaut Pitch Perfect?
There’s a side of this that you can pull on further. You can push past the gentle ribbing of Pitch Perfect 237 and onto its larger reflection of us, the way in which humankind likes to pull at something and find patterns so obsessively we don’t know which way is up. Many have made the case that Room 237 goes too far as it fanatically drills down and down and down into a stone-cold masterpiece in an effort to find something more revealing than the engrossing madness already on the screen. The way brains can make connections so easily that you stop noticing when a hop and a skip becomes a jump and a leap. The way, if you follow a trail long enough, it all goes back to 9/11 conspiracy theories —
But no! We don’t have to. That’s the beauty of Pitch Perfect 237, a film that gives itself over so cleanly to parody that we can give into our bursts of giggles. Whether you’re familiar with Room 237’s game or not, Pitch Perfect 237 is the six-minute, 48-second masterpiece to unwind with.
