And the Award for Best Drama for Housewives Goes to

Rating: 4/10 (26 January 2016)

It's hard to get revenge on a bad movie. I am partially consoled considering I snuck into this theater rather than paying for a ticket. Still, this subversion robbed me of the cathartic argument over my refund with some hapless manager. Room stole two hours of my life, and the only way I am going to get value from that experience is to get the last word.
Room has an extremely fertile premise. An unnamed woman (Brie Larson) has been kidnapped and imprisoned in a shed for seven years, five of which she has spent raising her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay). I am unaware how the book navigated this premise, but author and screenwriter Emma Donoghue had a bottomless potential of directions and selected none. The writing is too shallow to be a thought experiment on trauma or a character study. The narrative is too muddled by loose ends to be a simple "feel good" movie. Cult classic The Room had a similar degree of cohesion yeah okay no it didn't. Poor contractually obligated jokes aside, Room is simply aimless. This child grows up in a 10x10 room surrounded by sexual abuse his entire life and his lone complications are a paleness, shyness, and poor grammar. I have met children with comparable behavior from normal households. Children might be plastic, but no one is going to manage a full swift recovery from being born into this environment. The mother character is better explored, but barely. The strength of this woman while kidnapped is unbelievable, but interesting questions are raised after the escape. Her relationship with her parents, her friends, and dealing with new realties are all introduced and either dropped or solved off screen. This is a device derived from the book where everything is seen through Jack's perspective. But post-escape Jack is just cute and boring, not worth following. His narration of events is insufferable. The conclusion of Room is sickening. The film has the audacity to propose that mother and son will be able to leave this experience behind in the closing moments. This claim is beyond ignorant and well into insulting.
For the sake of critical fairness I will mention all the two and a half things I enjoyed. The escape sequence is genuinely thrilling. Putting a child in peril is often a cheap way to manipulate the audience. It worked here, so credit is due. Second, the cinematography in the room itself was surprising. I think most films would have tried for a more claustrophobic. Instead, the dimensions are simply defined and unjudged. The abrupt camera pans while Jack is running from wall to wall brilliantly reflects the mindset of these trapped characters. This place is simultaneously small and their entire world; traversing the room is trivial, but also the greatest possible distance. The one victory achieved by the closing scene is the brief moment perfect perspective when the room is seen from the outside. Finally, the acting was serviceable. It is hard to completely differentiate the awful roles from performances, but the film did dodge some melodrama.
The Oscars successfully suckered me into watching Room. I would like to just chuck this movie atop a pile of other examples where the illustrious academy failed, but I am apparently in the minority. There are some aspects of quality filmmaking here, but there is no prize for best drama for housewives. Room took a premise ripe with potential and failed to nurture it with a drop of ingenuity or realism. I was disappointed, and I refuse to believe I am the only one.