Product Details

• Actors: Chris Cannon, Nicholas Joseph Kattar, Paul Marron, Adam Ratcliffe
• Directors: Stephen Stahl
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: TLA
• DVD Release Date: September 4, 2007
• Run Time: 86 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000TKCNWE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,078 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

PLAYROOM - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Five Go Adventuring Again, November 5, 2008

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Playroom (DVD)

Five teen boys from an Eastern suburb enjoy a kegger at Maximo's parents' place, inviting the hottest chicks in town sometime in the 1980s. Twenty years later, most of the clique has gotten married and settled down, but they still blow off steam once a year during a big city weekend getaway. This year it's Philadelphia, ostensibly for an Eagles game, but for a few of the now grown men it's their chance to cheat on their wives and live it up and do cocaine without worrying about the consequences. They're all still boys at heart and the movie makes that clear once every thirty-five or forty seconds.

They each have different personalities, though the movie is underwritten as to what the personalities are, and the actors apparently have a lot of room to ham it up in the best Cassavetes style ("Husbands" anyone?), so you get the impression one is secretly a coward, another a sex addict, a third one probably a closet case, while Max is really trying to grow up, and the last guy (Nick) is the one who was raised by alcoholics so his personality has been deformed in some unclear way, but he's a cheater.

What they don't know (or most of them don't know) is that this year their group has been targeted by a David Lynch-like crew of pornographers who plan to kidnap and sexually molest the best looking of them. Led by a creepy old man (Robert Blake in LOST HIGHWAY, anyone?) this film crew locks up Nick and Jason in the eponymous "playroom" and proceed to make them into chemslaves, keeping them chained to their beds with only a single sheet between them and strap-on horrors they could not previously have imagined. The two actors do grand work looking like they've been put through hell, in a scene that goes back and forth with rapid cuts to a nightclub where the un-kidnapped members of the Five are watching a female stripper with rapt amusement. I get the impression the director is saying, porn is great while you're watching it, but when you're forced to bend over a jungle gym and be filmed with a electrified and sparking club inserted deep into your rectum, it's not that funny, is it, funny boy? These scenes are filmed in the most grim INLAND EMPIRE way, with the suspense being mostly about, will they be saved before they are snuffed out on video? How will we know?

One of the mad old man's lead actresses is a hooker to whom Max, the hero, had been inexplicably kind years ago, saving her from a beating at the hands of a john she had cheated. Years later, after the hardening of her human instincts and five years more on the street, has that spark of humanity been crushed in her, or will she risk her own life to give Max a helping hand when he needs it? The boys all have wives and kids back at home in suburbia. . who will return? Who will become addicted to the snuff lifestyle? This movie has two clever twists, and doesn't need them, how's that? Otherwise DELIVERANCE did it rather better, except these guys have the kind of body John Travolta had in the SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER sequel, STAYING ALIVE, directed by Sylvester Stallone.

2.0 out of 5 stars a morality tale???, August 10, 2008

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Playroom (DVD)

Do you remember when at the MTV Music Video Awards Aresenio Hall said, "'Head of the Class' is a sitcom in which 30 year-old actors pretend to be teenagers."? Well, this film starts in the characters' teenage years and then moves to 20 years later. The thing is: it's the same actors. They looked too old to be teenagers in the early scenes. One man wears a bandana as a teen and it's clearly meant to hide that he's balding now.
This film vaguely promotes good samaritanism and marital fidelity. It has surprise twists that are meant to be seen as deep and meant to obscure the low-budgety-ness of the work. Still, it falls flat in certain ways.
This film will also upset many viewers. I think the film is really just an expansion of a notorious scene in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." I've seen worse movies than this, but the film can never be seen as a strong one.
The film has no foreign language subtitles and it starts as soon as you place it in the DVD player because they want to hide that it has close to no added features on the disc.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Come Out and Play, February 22, 2009

By 

Tim Brough "author and music buff" (Springfield, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Playroom (DVD)

In a weird twist of the Hostel vein of films, "Playroom" (also known as "Consequences") kidnaps some sleazy guys from a perfect suburban lifestyle and lures them into a painful trap in....Philadelphia?!?! If they thought it was just gonna be cheese-steaks and Eagles Football, they were about to get their Liberty Bells rung. The two creepiest of these losers go on their annual "football trip," something they've been doing since graduating high school it seems, so they can ditch the wives and regress into the dopey 18 year olds they used to be.

Bad decision, as the first two of theses dodos wake up in some warehouse, chained to beds and terrorized by some creepy queen with snuff-porn on his mind. The two hos that brought them here in the first place don a set of strap-ons and it's lights, cameras, action! Meanwhile, the other three guys are irritated that these guys left them stranded for some nookie, but start to worry about why they didn't show up for the big game. The 'head' of the group, Maximo, starts on a search for the guys, dragging the cops into things. As Maximo and the other two go on a manhunt, our naked (save for strategically placed bedsheets) are being raped and tortured with a cattle-prod for Director McWeirdo.

While a weird reversal on the whole revenge flick (the guys are caught and tortured primarily by the ladies - even if its for the Queenly director), the bulk of the movie is strangely bloodless. As the finale finally gets to lumbering around, the violence quota is amped up considerably. By now, however, it's too little and too late. The clumsy direction, with ridiculous flashbacks to the film's opening bonfire being the most flagrant violation, hinders "Playroom" from getting a full head of steam. The opening sequence is a mess, as the actors try to play 18 year old versions of themselves only to show up as 30 somethings minutes later...looking exactly the same as before minus the crappy MTV clothes and hairspray. These missteps make it tough to reccomened "Playroom," unless you're a devotee of the whole 'torture-porn' genre. And if homo-erotic sequence are too much for your widdle sensibilities, then stay far far away.