I'm old enough — barely — to have seen Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece "The Shining" when it opened in the theaters back in 1980. My strongest memory of this tale of writer's block meets cabin-fever insanity is that my girlfriend's drink wound up in my lap the first time the twins appeared. People in the audience screamed; it was a terrifying flick back when the boundaries of horror were still wide open for exploration.

But aside from a rather enigmatic ending — much more so than the Stephen King novel from which it was adapted — "The Shining" seemed like just another scary movie, albeit one with an absolute mastery of technique. I watched it a few more times simply to explore Kubrick's methods; there is much to learn here about the use of camera angles and sound to build tension.

Little did I know that there is a group of people out there who have watched "The Shining" way more than a few times — and taken away rather more. With his new documentary "Room 237," director Rodney Ascher explores the way Kubrick's film has become an absolute obsession for a certain type of cinephile.