Room 237 (15)

HHHH

Dir: Rodney Ascher

Runtime: 102 minutes

ITS subtitle, Being an Inquiry into The Shining in 9 Parts, makes Rodney Ascher's documentary sound like a snore, but this dissection of some of the theories surrounding Kubrick's horror is great fun. Lining up contributors to argue that the film is about anything from genocide to faking moon landing footage, Ascher makes excellent use of talking heads and footage to give context to the apparently outlandish theories.

This will certainly have you thinking about The Shining again, just in time for its reissue next week.

FEATURE – PAGE 18

Halloween R/I (18)

HHH

Dir: John Carpenter

With: Jamie-Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance

Runtime: 90 minutes

IT's hard to remember, in the wake of countless imitators since, how fresh and original John Carpenter's 1978 horror once was.

The set-up is simple: a young man, Michael Myers, once convicted of a terrible crime, is on the loose again just in time for All Hallows' Eve.

Jamie-Lee Curtis plays the unlucky recipient of Michael's attentions. Still shockingly violent, but it rattles along, aided by Curtis, here making her film debut, and Donald Pleasance as Myers' psychiatrist.

Paranormal Activity 4 (15)

H

Dirs: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

With: Brady Allen, Katie Featherston

ON the subject of ideas so long past their sell-by date they should be reviewed by archaeologists, comes this, the fourth in the PA franchise.

This time there are annoying teenagers added to the mix as a single mother and her young charge move into a new neighbourhood.

Before you can say webcam and night vision, things are going bump and bang in the night.

Scrappy, daft, predictable, even die-hard fans of Oran Peli's original, well-executed idea will be wondering if this should be the last in the line.