Pop Culture Reviews

Room (2005) – DVD Review

Distributor: Accent Films  Released: 2006 Genre: Drama Credits: Director: Kyle Henry Starring: Cyndi Williams, Kenneth Wayne Bradley, Alexander Kiester Rating: M-L (Contains offensive language)

This review may contain spoilers.

Don’t be fooled by the strategically placed ‘critics’ quotes on the front of a DVD cover.That should be my lesson to learn after watching Room. Although I am not usually so easily beguiled into choosing my DVDs this way, after reading that the last 10 minutes of this movie are supposed to be ‘provocative and eye-opening’, I figured ‘what the heck’ and rented it anyway. Not such a great idea.

Room wasn’t ‘eye-opening’ nor really that provocative. At most I would call it ‘intriguing’ but only if you’re the type of person that enjoys going on wild goose chases with no real prize at the end of it. Perhaps that was the whole idea behind Room. Right now, a little deflated is all I really feel about it.

The movie wasn’t really bad, it was just multi-directional in a really chaotic kind of way without anything substantial underneath. We understand that the main character Julia (played well by Cyndi Williams) is a woman who is lost in her own life, a woman that seems to feel trapped in her own existence who suddenly begins to experience violent ‘visions’ that lead to blackouts. During these intense visions, we are shown a myriad of hazy images that may be a multitude of things, we’re never really sure. Is she seeing images from her past, perhaps a result of repressed memories? Is she experiencing an acute psychological event of some sort? The answer is anyone’s guess. These visions seem to drive Julia away from her family and life in Texas to New York city where she runs around the city aimlessly trying to find the places she keeps seeing in her visions.

Unless there is some sort of hidden intellectual meaning to this movie that escaped me, I still don’t know what Room was all about. I’ve read a few things around the internet as to what this movie represents but I’m not entirely convinced of anything.

If you’ve seen this movie and you think you may be able to explain what it’s all about, do let me know! There’s plenty of ‘room’ for discussion about it, I’m sure