It doesn't get any worse

Rating: 1/10 (17 November 2015)

It opens badly, but this is deceptive. If you watch carefully, are very, very patient, look at what's actually there, and give it three minutes-----it gets worse. But wait. This too is unfair. Are you actually seeing what's in front of your eyes? Are you sure? The film demands that you give it at least another ten minutes, and you do. And as soon as you do, it gets worse. After that it gets worse, and then worse, and worse, and worse. And it's only just begun. The setting hasn't even left the room. Then it does. Finally. Surprise! A goodly portion of the film, in fact, at least 30 percent, takes place outside the room. I have no idea why. To show that the outside world is just as claustrophobic? That would've been a good point, but the story doesn't allow it! The writer is adrift. The shift of scenery doesn't help. It makes Room even worse - and it gets worse yet, and even worse than that, despite the brief, welcome, charitable appearance of two superbly talented actors (William H. Macy and Joan Allen) who can actually act, whether they have a character to play or not. Acting, in fact, is not an issue in the movie. To be fair, the child star of the film, Jacob Tremblay (made deliberately genderless as only a 5-year-old could be) gives as execrable a performance as any adult ever has, and deserves a lot of credit for it. If the director intended it that way, he probably either has no children, or doesn't know or like any. It's not totally Tremblay's fault: he obviously found it impossible to believe in the story, as did the writer, director, actors and producers who concocted this infinitely boring, one-dimensional, unfelt drama. Here and there throughout the story, that sickly, treacly piano that has invaded the soundtrack of hundreds of anemic films like a skin rash makes an appearance. To top it off, Room is made with the highest of production values. They are the only values visible, and may lift the movie to the heights of Trumpian emptiness. Americans love nothing better in their movies: production values are the new family values. The overall impression is of a movie, clunkily directed by Lenny Abrahamson, written by someone (Emma Donoghue) whose entire experience of life must have been acquired in a room, probably a classroom, possibly a cloakroom, a writer unashamed to display her bad handwriting, and constitutionally unable or unwilling to share with the public how little she knows or cares about the world she inhabits. A lot has been written about the hell the cinematographers went through to make parts of this movie, jamming their equipment into a tiny cramped space for countless hours. It doesn't show, and what does is not interesting. If they'd shown us the hell, and not the Room they made of it, I'd have had a lot less to say but would've left with more than a craving for a quick burger on my mind.