The Room (2006)

Blistering performances.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The Room starts one day, just like any other for the family living in the large house in the country. The pregnant thirty year old Melinda (Caroline Veyt) does nothing but stay at home & care for her paralysed brother Alex (Pascal Duquenne) while their parents Max (Philippe Résimont) & Marie (Françoise Mignon) seem to hate each other & pretty much everyone else too as their younger brother John (Henri Luyckx) just finds the whole situation funny. The, suddenly, a mysterious door with carved letter on it appears at the end of an upstairs hallway. At first locked the family begin to argue & face their problems but what dark fate awaits them behind the door & inside the room...This Belgium production was written, produced & directed by Giles Daoust & is quite simply one of the most bizarre, pointless & unintentionally hilarious films I've seen in ages. Talk about a dysfunctional family, this lot in The Room are so exaggerated they come across as cartoon character's. Seriously, there is no subtlety here whatsoever. It's just flat out embarrassing dramatics that are so silly, overwrought & unbelievable that I was quite literally laughing. Froim the revelations that Max is a failed musician to Melinda & Alex having sex to John's ratty little friend Ben laughing at his host's as they argue to debate over Melinda's baby (like it's anyones choice other than hers) to Marie completely losing one scene & laying into everyone before the next scene where she writes a heartfelt letter of apology to neither Marie or Max wanting to look after their retard son Alex. The acting, dubbing, dialogue, character's & timing is dire & makes the whole film unintentionally funny when it's not being painfully boring. If that wasn't bad enough we only ever see Melinda enter the room & that so-called twist ending just adds insult to injury as the makers use the clichéd 'it was all a dream' nonsense. God damned The Room is awful. I'm not sure if the script was meant as a serious piece of drama that intended have some deep & dark character studies but as I said everything is so amateurish & overwrought it has no impact at all & the mild supernatural overtones just add more confusion & dissatisfaction. A real stinker.Obviously shot in Belgium the version I saw was dubbed into English & not since the heyday of the Italian splatter film have I seen such bad dubbing, while one could argue the dubbing on a film can add to it I assume The Room is meant to be a serious drama dealing with serious life changing issues but the bad dubbing, wooden English dialogue & strange accents meant I couldn't help but find the whole thing ever so slightly funny. Once inside the room itself there is more comedy gold, it's basically a big black space with a blue light in the distance. Melinda walks towards the light & sees various images of young black African children, you know the sort of images that the media uses to make us buy charity records. Bizarrely there's one shot of a kid with his eyes bulging out which again is just more funny than anything else as he looks like he's pulling a strange face to make his mates laugh. The whole film is just misjudged & probably achieves the exact opposite of what the makers intended. I won't even go into the scene when Melinda goes back downstairs to find red flowers growing out of the furniture & carpet in her living room!With a supposed budget of about €500,000 this looks cheap, the lighting, the setting, the special effects & the production values in general. Apparently shot in Brussels in Belgium. The acting might originally have been alright but slap the silly voices & dire English dubbing over them & it's painfully funny to watch, the things they say & the way it's said is just pure comedy.The Room is awful, is succeeds as nothing, not a drama, not a thriller or a horror film & I wouldn't even say it has any horror aspects to it apart from the dialogue, of course. The end credits are quite nice as there's an impressive large scale pan back from the house over miles of fields but overall I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

This film is just dreadful. Ther are no words to describe just HOW dreadful it is. oh wait! Yes there are! Whever you read people's comments on IMDb about some film being "the worst film ever made", well, they have obviously never had an hour and a half from their life stolen by sitting through this piece of drek.From uselessly "atmospheric" scenes that are prolonged far past their usefulness to any sort of story-telling, to characters that are themselves far beyond "cartoons" (amusingly alluded to in the brief television excerpts from those insane bunny rabbits doing "The Shining in 30 seconds").There are painfully stretched out scenes of slowly walking down a poorly lit corridor (and I mean BAD lighting, not simply "dark", but truly, painfully BAD use of lighting technique), where the only thing that you can think is "at this rate the film will last a week before everyone in the film gets killed off!" The acting is bland and amateurish, with the single exception of Philippe Résimont, who chews scenery with an enthusiasm that I have only seen rivaled in the very worst of community theatre. Every scene in which we have the displeasure of seeing him looks like a drunken brother-in-law at a pool party doing his best imitation of Jack Nicholson in "The Shining". And we're talking about that brother-in-law we all have who couldn't act his way out of a soggy paper bag.I know, my review is a bit "over the top", but I'm just one of those people who NEVER hates a movie. So I'm rather shocked at the extent this film brought up feelings of revulsion and disgust.That someone put up perfectly good money to pay for this garbage revolts me.That I now have to go back and re-adjust all of my former votes on IMDb to bring them up a notch, to leave SOME room for how low I want to rate this film.This film is NOT full of "cool imagery" nor atmosphere, nor is it by ANY stretch of the imagination "original". It's pure garbage. Don't waste your time.

Giles Daoust's film is boring, stale and troubling. Troubling because somehow he got to write, produce and direct this film with no outside guidance. That is a bad thing. This film feels like a cheap knock-off of classic thrillers rather than the intended homage that Daoust had anticipated when creating this awful thriller. Stay away. Stay clear away. Social issues of abandonment and abuse are seen miles away and the climax of the film is boring, needless and predicted from the first frame. Despite any allusion to horror and/or violence by the DVD cover the film is sorely lacking in any. It is a clearly misleading image used to sell a horrible film to an unknowing audience. Buyers and Renters beware.

I should probably start by saying that I knew very little about this film going in. I knew that there was a family and in their home was a mysterious door that remained locked at all times.... just like the bedroom door in my house... So I threw the DVD in with bated breath and within minutes, I was as comfortable as Fred Krueger during a coffee shortage. Why? Because the film opens with a kick-ass steady cam shot that moves through the house introducing all of our main characters and the rooms they'll be playing in. All in one take! Yep. I knew I was in good hands, and it only gets better, people.It's hard to talk about the plot of THE ROOM, because it's all about what you don't know; however, I can give you a little something to chew on. I mentioned the door, but what I didn't tell you is that it appears out of nowhere. All the characters and the audience know is that it wasn't there five minutes ago, it's locked and nearly every square inch has letters carved into it… Now this dysfunctional family must solve the mystery of the door before they end up killing each other. (Yes, they're not the happiest group of people and there's a crap load of stuff going on with them, but we need to leave it at that.)If you know me by now, then you know that my favorite films are usually written and directed by the same filmmaker, as it is in this case. When one person shoulders the task of bringing their own material to life, you almost always get that "magic" that is otherwise hard to accomplish, and by "magic" I mean a clear vision for the material. Writer/director Giles Daoust proves once again that my theory is correct. THE ROOM has that unique stamp of somebody who knows exactly what kind of story he wants to tell. One example: when we view flashbacks in the story, every color is stripped from the film with the exception of red. When we see this color scheme we know we are in the past. That's just one M&M in a king size bag of originality. (Huh?? Well, okay… it sounded good to me!)The script is exceptional, but from the beginning it doesn't take a NASA scientist to figure out that THE ROOM is more of a thriller then a straight horror movie. I'm not even sure if it's a thriller - maybe a drama? Aww, screw it; it's a little of everything, I suppose. But let's talk about that cast. No joke here people, this film contains some incredible acting and great characters. I was drawn to two of them, especially – mainly because of the actors themselves. The first being Melinda, played by Caroline Veyt. Not only can Caroline act amazingly well, but she is beautiful, sexy and most intriguing. Her eyes are so striking, they practically jump off the screen at you. The kind of eyes that you want to cut out, and wear on a chain around your neck. Very intriguing girl, that Caroline.The other is Max, played by Philippe Résimont. He's a frustrated composer who is clearly ticked off at the world because things have never gone his way. He can't sell a piece of music to save his life; he despises his mentally challenged son; he hates his daughter because she's pregnant and won't divulge the father's name, and is basically disgusted by his wife 24/7. Yep, he has a few problems. But what makes him so interesting to me is that you never know what he's going to do. One minute he's cracking jokes, usually at the most inappropriate times (genuinely funny jokes though) and then the next minute he's hitting his wife in the face. Nice! You never know what to expect from him, or the shifting dynamic of this group of characters.The last point I want to make is about the door itself and the 'alternate reality' associated with it. Obviously, the idea of a door appearing from thin air is completely impossible, but I still found myself engrossed in the situation and story. I would have bet all the money in the world that the door really existed and I think this is attributed to Giles' deadly serious approach to the material. The whole film relies on the believability of these characters and the situation they're in, and if you're not invested in it right from the start, then the film goes completely to crap. Every element of film-making here - from the set design to the music - is excellent, making it work as well as it does. I also had to know what the hell was behind that door. What could it be? Eventually we get the answer and it IS horrifying. Good pay off there.You can probably tell I enjoyed this very much. It's not often when I experience something as completely original. If you enjoy atmosphere, great characters and cool imagery then this one's a must-see. But remember, THE ROOM is far from being your traditional horror movie, so if that's what you're looking for you've come to the wrong room. Uh, I mean place.