Room (2015)

Held captive for years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.

Director:

Lenny Abrahamson

Writers:

Emma Donoghue (screenplay by), Emma Donoghue (based on the novel by)

Stars:

Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers

Top Rated Movies #151 | Won 1 Oscar. Another 104 wins & 137 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Brie Larson	...	Ma
Jacob Tremblay	...	Jack
Sean Bridgers	...	Old Nick
Wendy Crewson	...	Talk Show Hostess
Sandy McMaster	...	Veteran
Matt Gordon	...	Doug
Amanda Brugel	...	Officer Parker
Joe Pingue	...	Officer Grabowski
Joan Allen	...	Nancy
Zarrin Darnell-Martin	...	Attending Doctor
Cas Anvar	...	Dr. Mittal
William H. Macy	...	Robert
Jee-Yun Lee	...	News Anchor
Randal Edwards	...	Lawyer
Justin Mader	...	FBI Agent

Storyline

ROOM tells the extraordinary story of Jack, a spirited 5-year-old who is looked after by his loving and devoted mother. Like any good mother, Ma dedicates herself to keeping Jack happy and safe, nurturing him with warmth and love and doing typical things like playing games and telling stories. Their life, however, is anything but typical--they are trapped--confined to a 10-by-10-foot space that Ma has euphemistically named Room. Ma has created a whole universe for Jack within Room, and she will stop at nothing to ensure that, even in this treacherous environment, Jack is able to live a complete and fulfilling life. But as Jack's curiosity about their situation grows, and Ma's resilience reaches its breaking point, they enact a risky plan to escape, ultimately bringing them face-to-face with what may turn out to be the scariest thing yet: the real world.

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Plot Keywords:

escape | kidnapping | mother son relationship | imprisonment | unlawful confinement | 

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Taglines:

Survive is only the beginning

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

Ireland Canada UK USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 January 2016 (USA)

Also Known As:

Room

Filming Locations:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$13,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$1,335,563, 16 October 2015, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$14,677,674

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$36,262,783

Company Credits

Production Co:

Element Pictures, Film 4, FilmNation Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

118 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film, while not adapted from any real-life sources, shares several similarities with the case of Amanda Berry, one of three young women held captive for over a decade by Ariel Castro. Berry was kidnapped in Cleveland, Ohio (and this movie is set in Akron, Ohio) and she was raped by her kidnapper and bore his child (like Old Nick does to "Ma"/Joy). She also managed to escape with her child after spending years locked in a shuttered room. Any similarities between the fictional story in Room and the real-life stories of Ariel Castro's victims are purely coincidental, since Emma Donoghue's novel Room was published in mid-2010, three years before Castro's crimes were discovered.

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Goofs

When Ma and Jack visit room at the end of the film, Jack opens the left door of wardrobe first, then the right. When he closes the doors, he closes the left first, then the right. The right door does not close completely (they are coordinated doors). In the next scene (a wider shot), we see Jack looking around and the doors are closed completely. When the scene changes back to a close up, the right door is not closed completely again.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Ma: Ssh. Go back to sleep.
Jack: [reciting to himself] Once upon a time, before I came, you cried and cried and watched TV all day, until you were a zombie. But then I zoomed down from heaven, through skylight, into Room. Whoosh-pshew! And I was kicking you from the inside. Boom, boom! And then I shot out onto Rug with my eyes wide open, and you cutt-ed the cord and said, "Hello, Jack!"

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Crazy Credits

In the "Special Thanks to" part of the credit, there's the name of Jack White, the guitarist and vocalist of the band The White Stripes, a poster of which can be seen in a scene in Joy's bedroom.

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Connections

Featured in Making 'Room' (2016)

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Soundtracks

Bag Fight
Written by Klaus Badelt and Andrew Raiher
Performed by Klaus Badelt, Daniel Rojas and Andrew Raiher
Published by KB Publishing and A Olympus Pictures
Courtesy of Wunderhorn Music, Inc.

User Reviews

Awesome film - shame about the trailer

Room, based on the book by Emma Donoghue, starts on young Jack's 5th birthday. He gets a birthday cake from his mother (but no candles); a visit from his father; and a gift, albeit belatedly. This would all be perfectly normal except that all of this takes place within 'Room' - a confined space with only a single skylight for daylight and no means of escape. For the mother, Joy, was abducted as a teen and locked away for sex in the style of the dreadful real-life examples such as that perpetrated by Josef Fritzl in Austria. Jack is the (presumably) unintended result: a boy with no perception of the real world beyond his four single-sided walls and with the staunchly-held view that the things he sees on a flickering TV screen are in 'TV land' and unreal. Will Jack and Joy survive and ever see freedom again?

And that's where I'll leave this synopsis, since (if you've been lucky enough to avoid the trailer) there is a tense cat-and-mouse story to unfurl here.

This is an absorbing, although slow-moving, film that builds to some truly nail-biting moments. The screenwriter (also Donoghue) and director (Irishman Lenny "Frank" Abrahamson) are to be commended in keeping the story and drama really well-grounded and un-saccharined. Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), the 'evil kidnapper', is not painted as some predictable monster: he is even portrayed to be kind and caring at some warped level. And there is no gratuitous sex: we are in effect seven years into the story and the abnormal is now completely normalised.

The film is told primarily from the viewpoint of Jack (Jacob Tremblay) but we also get under the skin of Joy (Brie Larson) and her emotions in trying to mentally deal with her ordeal. Looking at a picture of her with her school friends she bitterly comments that "Nothing happened to them - - they just got on with their lives".

The acting is superb. I made the mistake of voting for John Boyega for the BAFTA Rising Star award before seeing this film (you can cast your vote here http://www.bafta.org/film/awards/ee-rising-star-award-in-2016). Not that Boyega isn't great, but Brie Larson really REALLY delivers here. She obviously won't give a hoot if she wins the Best Actress Oscar! And for me, for this award, she shines out in what I would perhaps see as one of this year's weaker Oscar categories. Jacob Tremblay is also exceptional as Jack - and it would be nice (rather than try to compare young performances with adult ones, as per Anna Paquin) if there was a special awards category for actors and actresses under 10. If there was, then Tremblay would storm it! You seriously forget that this is a child acting a part. He is totally connected to the role and these two core performances lock in your belief in the story.

Supporting the cast are the ever reliable William H Macy as Joy's mentally tortured father, Joan Allen (Pamela Landy from the "Bourne" films) as her equally distraught mother and Sean Bridgers as the kidnapper.

At 2 hours long some of the scenes in the middle of the film made my attention waver a little. But my main criticism is in the trailer and marketing of the film. If ever there was a need for a true 'teaser trailer' this is it. I never know who is responsible for putting trailers together - whether the director has the final say or whether its some nameless marketing bods in the distribution company, but whoever it is they should be taken out and 'given a good talking to' for this travesty. It's like putting all of the twists in films like "The Crying Game", "The Sixth Sense" and "Gone Girl" in their respective trailers. I've gone so far as to create my own One Mann's Movies cut of the trailer, just for you good people, which I have included with my bob-the-movie-man.com version of this review.

A leisurely, nuanced and effecting drama, this is not for fans of "Die Hard" or "Fast and Furious" fans. But for everyone else, this should be a must see.

Please visit bob-the-movie-man.com for the graphical version of this review. Thanks.