The Butterfly Room (2012)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Beautiful, moving film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie begins with an interesting premise but it quickly disappoints due to the rocky acting from the supporting cast and the shoddy script. Barbara Steele is very effective as the unhinged central character, but her performance is not complemented by any of the other actors.The children are shrill and impertinent, failing to garner any of the audience's sympathies. The adults are utterly incompetent and react in bizarre, unrealistic ways to the way the plot unfolds. Not a single one of the characters, with the exception of the lead, is written like an actual human being.At one point a other in an elevator flies into an absurd rage when Ann, our main character, mistakes her for someone else. Another character is supposed to be around age 14, and definitely looks it, but dresses up like she's five.All well and good for entrancing old women, but do you really expect me to believe that the Shirley Temple shtick works on all of the other characters? Not a single one of them has a comment for the teenager who acts like she's three? There are so many stupid moments in this so-called mystery, a mystery that even an infant could unravel in five minutes, a mystery that only these rotten characters could become stuck in. This movie sucks!P.S - Some of these glowing reviews really lead me to believe that this page is being frequented by folks who are paid to review. Trust me when I say that it is virtually impossible to enjoy this film, unless you are practically brain dead and/or getting paid.

First I have to say Barbara Steele looks great to be as old as she is. She does a good job with her role. The movie itself is original, and different , and interesting enough to make you want to see how it ends. Worth seeing once.Now the direction.... first as a writer JZ has good ideas but his writing is not very good. Might have been a better movie had he let someone else write the story based on his novel and ideas.I liked some elements, like the girl Alice picking up older women and them paying her to spend time with them.Had a top notch director and a good writer done this movie it could have been quite good.the main character /villain being a woman who loved young girls, but was a horrible mother to her own daughter. she is also a sociopath, no remorse , and can kill with no remorse. she seemed to not like men at all.the characters are all a little unrealistic, but at same time realistic.The movie itself is confusing with the silly flashbacks, but the basic story is Ann wants to have her daughter back, or better yet to have another daughter, as long as she doesn't have to have a baby herself. the big surprise is what happens to Alice the smart girl who leases out her companionship. **spoilers below***Alice winds up like the butterfly's. the other young girl Julie is the one who sort of solves the mystery, and is Ann's undoing. Ironically Ann saves her at the end from being hit by a car, even though she was trying to kill her.So overall I gave it a 6 due to being different and somewhat original. I will add the acting is good so the direction was good from that standpoint. The main problem was the story wasn't quite right, and need to not have the flashbacks.

The entomologist Ann (Barbara Steele) is an old lonely woman with bipolar disorder and rejected by her daughter Dorothy (Heather Langenkamp) due to a serious incident when Dorothy was a child. When Ann meets the manipulative girl Alice (Julia Putnam) in a mall, she becomes Ann's companion, receiving an allowance in return. Soon Ann finds that Alice manipulates other old women and she visits her crippled mother Olga (Camille Keaton) and she discovers that she is a prostitute that uses Alice to make money for her. Ann reacts in a violent way against Alice's mother and triggers her madness.In the present days, Ann meets the girl Julie (Ellery Sprayberry) in her building alone in the corridor. Her mother and Ann's neighbor Claudia (Erica Leerhsen) neglects her daughter and Ann takes care of Julie. Ann brings Julie to her apartment and she does not allow her to enter in her butterfly room, where she keeps more sensitive specimens; however Julie tells to her mother that there is a girl inside the room. What is the secret of the butterfly room? "The Butterfly Room" is a creepy non-linear movie with a deranged lead character performed by Barbara Steele. The timeline with many flashbacks seems to be confused to many viewers that apparently did not understand the plot and the movie is underrated in IMDb. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Borboleta" ("The Secret of the Butterfly")

It was a promising film, with loads of Argento-like captures and also in general plot. I really had a good time, although confused by the time-lines, that at some point go berserk.At this moment, you don't know who is who, the what or why or when get all mixed up, messed up, and I can't even describe the last 30 minutes...If anyone even read my comments, they should know I am a total horror/thriller fan, and it's not my business dissing movies, instead I'd love to say good things about this genre.But really, this turns out to be pathetic, pointless, overall confusing, and really with no plot.