Customer Reviews

The Killing Room

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A movie as spare as the clinically white room in which most of the action takes place, THE KILLING ROOM is tightly wound and highly entertaining. Shot in a slightly monochromatic, gritty visual style the film introduces a room of strangers gathered together to participate in a medical experiment for cash--or so they think. What unfolds is part SAW, part THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and just a tiny bit Jason Bourne and the video game PORTAL. Movies that focus on the 'what would you do to survive' motif are hardly new and usually fail because they are rehashes of old material or because they are simply too gross. THE KILLING ROOM is able to walk the fine line between ruthlessness and psychological tension coupled with a strange believability that really drives it all home.

The director Jonathan Liebesman has also wisely chosen to let the audience watch the action from both the killing room as well as from behind the scenes, all through the eyes of the very well acted Ms. Reilly (Chloë Sevigny). Ms. Reilly (without giving away too much of the plot) is introduced very early on as interviewing for a position with a government agency that tests the bounds of human psychology. The stress of this interview and its effects on her as well as her very subtle facial expressions are convincing. I found her character to be the most interesting in this sparsely populated movie.

There are several nicely constructed scenes that are well acted. In particular are the interactions between Ms. Reilly and Dr. Phillips her interviewer early in the film. There is a quiet menace lurking in the dialogue that is frequently more palpably frightening than the main action taking place below them behind bullet-proof glass. Other excellent moments include the final reveal--which delivers an unexpected surprise, one that I did not see coming.

There are a few key weaknesses to the film. Chief among them are the overuse of narrative voice masquerading as radio traffic. Much is told instead of shown through these, and by the end of the film I was quite tired of anonymous video game voices filing in the gaps. Another weak area is in some of the predictability of the plot. However, that is offset by the fantastic reveal at the end of the film which as I said, is quite unexpected.

Overall THE KILLING ROOM succeeds because it doesn't bite off more than it can chew. The set is very controlled and basic, the characters are left as cardboard cut-outs (which in a film like this is virtue) and the entire film is handled in a removed and emotionless fashion that is perfect for making the main points of the film. The film style is stylized documentary with frequent hand camera shots mixed with menacing angle shots and close ups that keep the viewer both engaged and properly distanced throughout. Liebesman has cut the film to a short 93 minutes; just the right length for his subject matter.

3.5/5 Stars. Well made, boldly ruthless, and delivers a well done final reveal.

Let me start out saying I am reviewing the movie itself, and not the Blu-ray release. I have seen it in HD on HBO but have not yet seen the blu-ray (as it is not out yet).

This movie is an excellent suspense / thriller movie. Premise is that a small group of people are brought to a room for a "psychological research study". Basically under the guise that if they participate in the questionaire they will get paid. Things quickly go downhill from there, and soon become caught in an experiment that forces them to fight for survival The story isnt terribly original, but it is spun in such a way that it is definately worth watching. Also it is one of those stories that is best watched without knowing too much about it, as a large part of the movie is trying to figure out whats going on as they feed you little tid-bits of information throughout the movie.

Its not a big budget movie, so they keep things simple. This is not to say its low budget or low quality, they did a good job of knowing what they had and managing to stay within their limits to keep things sharp looking and sounding. The ending of the movie is definately more "small studio" than "big hollywood" as you can tell the ending is more what the director wanted rather than what the studio felt would sell best.

All in all this was a great under-the-radar suspense movie that kept me interested from the very begining until the very end.

Length:: 7:25 Mins

HHH reviews The Killing Room from Jonathan Liebesman - the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, & Darkness Falls

Four individuals are ushered into a small room, where they are told to fill in the questionnaire they are given. They are Crawford (Timothy Hutton), Kerry (Clea DuVall), Paul (Nick Cannon) and Tony (Shea Whigham). Obviously there are no connections between these people, except that they all have volunteered for the scientific or psychological researches conducted by some institute. But one terrible thing happens and they realize that what they are asked to do is something far more difficult than they expected, including their own survival. After all, the film's title is "The Killing Room."

The premise of the film might remind you of some of the recently-made thrillers (like "Cube" and "Das Experiment"). Part of the film's uniqueness, however, derives from its subplot (or main plot) about those who are observing the consequences of their researches. Chloë Sevigny plays a young, ambitious researcher Ms. Reilly and Peter Stormare, Dr. Phillips, her supervisor. As you see, there is a political message in the film reflecting the post 9/11 world, which you may find thought-provoking, or just absurd.

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" "Darkness Falls"), "The Killing Room" provides enough suspense to keep you interested in the story, but perhaps you shouldn't look for coherent logics here. Also, those who are intrigued by its "MK-ULTRA" premise, a code name for certain governmental research program, will find that the film's story has little to do with the real-life counterpart. Well, but who knows?

The thriller has some moments, especially its "countdown" sequences, and the actors all turned in very good performances. "The Killing Room" is fairly thrilling though you just cannot ignore its obvious plot holes.

The Killing Room (Joanthan Liebesman, 2009)

The Killing Room is one of those movies that could have been really, really fantastic if it had been tweaked just a little bit more. Which is kind of surprising given that it was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, previoiusly responsible for such deathless cinema as Darkness Falls and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Maybe this means Liebesman is finally starting to hone his chops as a director of movies that actually want to build suspense instead of splashing the screen with very unsuspenseful gore. He's still got a lot of work to do, but at least this is kind of promising. Das Experiment it is not, by any means, but it's miles better than Darkness Falls.

The plot revolves around four people who have volunteered to take place in a seemingly innocuous government experiment. They are Paul (Drumline's Nick Cannon), Kerry (Identity's Clea DuVall), Crawford (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men's Timothy Hutton), and Tony (Splinter's Shea Whigham, whom I think I've seen in at elast five movies in the past three months). Monitoring the experiment are longtime government official Dr. Phillips (Bruiser's Peter Stormare) and his brand new assistant Ms. Reilly (American Psycho's Chloe Sevigny). Everything starts off nice and simple, but Phillips throws a monkeywrench into the works almost immediately, and Reilly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about the ethics of psychology as the experiment progresses.

This is another one of those movies (like The Death Factory Bloodletting, above) where the screenwriters, in this case Gus Krieger (his first work) and Ann Peacock (Kit Kittredge: An American Girl), put together a cast of characters who seem tailor-made for this sort of thing, and then do very little with the results. The relationship between Paul and Tony, for example, ricochets back and forth between animosity and soulmate without any real reasoning, and Reilly's qualms, though we get a depiction of them now and again, don't really seem to be based on any deep-seated personality traits. (This makes one of the big plot twists towards the end of the film simultaneously predictable and disappointing; you know it's going to happen, and you want to throw popcorn at Liebesman for making the fact that it's going to happen so obvious.) For what it's worth, if you take out the character development factor, it's not an awful script, but how can you take out the character development factor when you compare it to the movie's obvious father figure, Das Experiment? That one has everything this one does, but the strength of Hirschbiegel's characters makes it a much more satisfying exercise in tension.

Worth seeing if you're a fan of one of the principals, but ultimately just a way to waste an hour and a half while waiting for something better to come on. **

THE KILLING ROOM takes four unsuspecting subjects, including Timothy Hutton (The Kovac Box) and Clea Duvall (How To Make A Monster, The Grudge, Identity), and plunges them into a psychological nightmare. The four are trapped in a white room w/ no exit, and forced to answer a series of questions. The "wrong" answer can and does mean certain death for one of them. Meanwhile, the mysterious folks behind this insane experiment observe and manipulate from their perch above the sterile room. Peter Stormare (8mm, Unknown) and Chloë Sevigny (Zodiac) are in the control center. Sevigny's character begins to have problems w/ what is happening, as well as her own role in it. Will she help these poor people, or will she choose to follow her orders? Several lives are at stake, but in the end we learn the final, soul-scorching secret and realize that this isn't just some sort of sadistic experiment after all. It is the gang-raping of the human mind in order to fulfill a diabolical purpose. Dark stuff indeed. Highly recommended...

DARKLY DISTURBING FILM THAT BECOMES TEDIOUS IN ITS DELIBERATE PACING. IT'S NOT BORING..I FOUND MYSELF INVOLVED. IT'S OBVIOUS FROM THE BEGINNING THAT IT'S SOME KIND OF COVERT GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT. FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS A LITTLE LESS OBVIOUS.
DISCUSSING MORE WOULD INVOLVE TOO MANY SPOILERS. WHILE ASSUREDLY PROVOCATIVE, I CAN'T SAY IT'S ENTERTAINING. THE ACTING OVERALL IS DECENT BUT NICK CANNON'S A WEAK LINK. CHLOE SEVIGNY, TIMOTHY HUTTON AND SHEA WIGHAM COME OUT ON TOP.
THE TERROR OF SECRET EXPERIMENTATION IS PRESENTED FEARFULLY BUT BSOME OF IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

This movie is fun because the characters DON'T have depth. The whole point is to try and figure out which psychological profile is the one that they are trying to find for candidacy in their program. It was entertaining, and had a nice twist at the end that outdid Shyamalan's usual plot twist fare. Citizen Kane it is not, but I don't see the point in comparing this movie to the Usual Suspects. Apples and oranges and all that. Its more like a less gory Saw (the first one). And way to throw out the spoiler in the review, Buzz Killington. Handing out spoilers in a review doesn't convey your ire for the movie. What it does in fact do is irritate people who are going to purchase/watch the movie.

I've watched this film twice on my cable In-Demand HD.

Point blank: it is a fantastic, highly-entertaining film from several standpoints. Engrossing and hard-to-predict plot, some superb acting, great ending, relevance (War on Terror aspect).

Sure it has some holes...[MEGA SPOILER]
- What if one of the "candidates" needed to use the bathroom during the elimination? I assume there are no bathroom breaks.
- Why does America need suicide bombers when it has hi-tech, long-range guided missles??

Overall though, highly recommended. I WILL purchase a DVD.

I give this movie three stars even though I didn't really like it. But if you like the Saw movies you will probably like this movie.