The Room

This is a heart-wrenching and believable tale of human grit and a close love between a mother and her boy, it’s truly deserving of all the positive comments and early Academy buzz. Never has a movie so enthralled me, well at least for quite some time; this film is an astonishing and deep joy.

All five year old Jack knows is the ‘room’, a small place he knows as home, away from the TV world of space and heaven. Jack’s mother Joy, knows different of course. She’s been held hostage for seven years in this room and now her son is getting older there’s a chance for explanations and an effort to escape.

There is such beauty throughout; even the confined and frankly disturbing scenes within the room are seen as innocent thanks to the unknowing wanderings of Jack. Joy and Jack’s voices serve as perfect narrators, the voiceovers adding detail and realism to a desperate situation. Room opens up with extreme close ups and constantly in this section of the film we see objects and critters as Jack views them, his happy yet naïve way instantly connecting us to him as a character.

The first half of the movie speaks as a claustrophobic thriller with crime and tension, whereas the second half pushes through as a dramatic family portrait of love and trauma. Both halves satisfy, though in terms of the ending, I found the last ten minutes or so of the feature predictable. I would have liked some of the darker elements from the room to bleed into the big wide world more.