Science fiction film. Co-production between France, Luxembourg and Belgium. Directed by Christian Volckman and starring the beautiful Olga Kurylenko.
What is the plot?
Matt and Kate, form a seemingly happy marriage. They are both handsome, she works as a translator and he is a painter. They buy a house far from the city, in the middle of nowhere, from the typical scary houses, but they see it beautiful. While they fix it up and clean it up, they discover a mysterious room inside the house. It is a room where everything they ask for appears. Furniture, clothes, paintings, money, everything they want, comes true. But Kate, who has had two abortions, will cross the line when she asks for a child from the room, not knowing the strict rules that must be followed with everything the room does.
The room is made up of several movie genres, has elements of psychological thriller, reflecting how the couple is blinded by ambition. That strange room can give them everything they want, including money, exotic foods, clothes, jewelry. Absolutely everything that greed makes them want.
Who wouldn't? What would you ask for from such a room? I wouldn't last a week alive, I'd end up consumed by the food and sex orgies that that kind of fantasy could give. The two characters spend several days in a constant party, asking for all the possible luxuries and having fun with each other.
With the functioning of the room, the other film genre of the film, science fiction, comes into play. There is not much to explain, the inside of the walls of the house seems to be surrounded by the wires that come from an old electrical system that originated in the basement. It looks like some kind of machine; it could be an invention something that comes from another world. But none of this will be explained in the film.
As a third genre, the doses of terror are captured in the script. In the 1970s, the former couple who owned the house were brutally murdered by a stranger, a John Doe, in a mental hospital in his forties. Matt will turn to this crazy killer when he tries to find out more about the room. The madman, now an old man, will alert him to get away from that house as soon as he can, but of course, he won't listen to him.
The plot consists of several twists, which seemed to me a little predictable. The first is when we discover what happens to everything that the room makes happen. At that moment I realized which would be the path that the whole story would take. But that didn't stop me from staying interested and even enjoying it.
The mystery of who this John Doe is and the reasons he had for killing the former owners of the house is also predictable. That takes away from the strength of the mystery narrative, I would have liked a little more effort from the writers, to keep several things hidden until the final arc, to be able to surprise the viewer.
The development of the main characters seemed to me to be failing and being pushed into very forced situations. Some decisions don't flow naturally, they are too noticeable as impositions of the script.
Both of them want to have a child, but every time they have tried, they have failed. Kate has had two losses and doesn't want to go through that trauma again. She's afraid of repeating the cycle, getting pregnant and then having an abortion. So she decides to make her greatest wish come true in that magic room. The baby appears and she already wants it as her biological child.
It is impossible for Matt to accept that this baby is his child, but he acts erratically every time he has the chance to reverse what his wife asked for. It was very easy to ask the room to make the child disappear. He doesn't, so he has to take the consequences when he finds out what happens to the wishes that come true in that house.
In the last third of the film, the action takes off and a battle begins against this human monster they have created. During this part the most exciting scenes of the film occur and there is even a disturbing one, but it is not shown very well. If that scene had been filmed more explicitly, it would have had more impact, both at that moment and in the last shot that closes the film.
French filmmaker Christian Volckman had not directed a film for more than ten years. His previous work was the successful black and white animated film, entitled Renaissance, which received many critical accolades, being one of the best neo noir and cyberpunk animated films of the last decade.
Volckman is the one who had the main idea of the film and helped him in the script Sabrina B. Karine and Eric Forestier . I have the feeling that this idea would have been more effective if it had been made as an animated film, to explore in a more graphic way what relates to that wish list. Perhaps the filmmaker is better at animation than working with real actors.
Belgian actor Kevin Janssens plays Matt, the artist who wants to be happy with the woman he loves, so he decides to move to a horror movie theater. His character seems a bit silly to me, because he buys a house without knowing that a crime has taken place in it. The electric company worker tells him this and with a Google search it seems like all the news. This is a flaw in the script. The actor has worked in more than twenty films and television series in France and Belgium.
Olga Kurylenko plays Kate, the woman he measured to abort again, pushing her to ask for a room for a baby, a fact she went too far with, with unimaginable consequences. A couple of months ago I reviewed another movie in which the actress was also the protagonist. Kurylenko is focused on her acting career and does not mind experimenting in any genre, we can see her in romantic comedies, thrillers, action movies, horror and science fiction. She wants to be an actress who can embrace any character.
The Room has moments of suspense and scenes that can generate tension in the viewer, the performances are not first class, but the idea of the room that fulfills all desires and as this couple will be a victim of their bad decisions, has a solid foundation. An explanation of how this wish machine works is needed, but the whole final part has enough merit to enjoy the film.
It is available on Amazon Prime.
My Ranking: 2.7/5
Trailer
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