Customer Reviews

Red Room

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

 

 

I would have liked to give Red Room no stars at all, but unfortunately you have to give it at least 1. That's 1 more star than it deserves. I bought this DVD thinking that it would be something similar to the infamous Guinea Pig series. Boy was I wrong! Yes, they are B-movies, but while Guinea Pig delivers exatly what it promises, this movie gives you nothing that it promises.

On the front cover, it warns the viewer that this movie contains graphic violence. That could not be further from the truth. What I got most out of this movie, was almost soft-core, excruciatingly fake sounding, sex-scenes, and IMPLIED scenes of disturbing violence. That's right. Implied NOT graphic.

Now, I am a big fan of japanese movies and Unearthed Films has released other good, very gory movies, like Guinea Pig and Aftermath. However, Red Room was not worth the $14.99 I paid for it, or the 68 minutes I spent watching it. Red Room is not worth a single cent of your money, or a second of your time.

The sad thing is, Unearthed Films probably realized this, which led to their false-advertising DVD cover. For shame, Unearthed Films, for shame. You disappoint me.

If you're looking for a movie with almost soft-core, fake-sounding porn scenes, than Red Room is for you. However, if you're looking for some graphic, gory, ultra-violence, than I suggest you watch Guinea Pig: The Devil's Experiment. It took away the bad taste in my mouth that Red Room left.

First off, a warning: the film quality of this movie is destitute, barely meeting the quality of a poorly-budgeted soap opera. Furthermore, the acting, music and sets were subpar even compared to the film quality. That said, when I noticed these flaws during the first few minutes I wanted to return it--then, I decided to wrench through it only to be pleasantly surprised.

Sometimes a movie wins my favor even when it's trash. Red Room was trash. But fun trash to watch with friends and a few drinks. Watching this in solitary sobriety would be a grave, aggravating and likely boring mistake. This in mind, my rating is one of personal entertainment value and not a rational assessment as it would apply to all viewers.

I found myself appreciating some of the torture-pornesque "dares" (although I would have taken the dares much further had I been the writer) of the over-simplistic King Game. In this game all four players draw one of the four cards each. He who holds the King gets to declare what the others must do in order to remain in the game. Naturally, as the game progresses and people who were victems of previous turns become Kings, the dares evolve from sophomoric to mean to cruel to perversely malevolent. But the players, who were given poorly written backgrounds to convince the viewer of their desperation to win, endure since they all covet the prize money.

The violence and gore of which the viewer would be admonished on the DVD cover are more implied than graphic. There is nothing of shocking nature to anyone who has seen either Saw 1-5, Cube 1-3 or Hostel 1-2 (all of which were WAY more shocking than anything in Red Room). My entertainment came with the quiet anticipation of the next vengefully cruel challenge by the King. The scenes including sexual content seemed to be jestingly choreographed with ridiculous sound effects. Such scenes were presented as if a pair of virgins who just discovered the means of kissing and intercourse moments ago were charged with direction and starring in those scenes. Again, watching this alone would result in a growing desire to kill anything making a sudden movement. However, among jovial friends, I found myself having fun mocking the quality of a trash movie.

This movie is for those who enjoy bad, bad, bad horror and thrillers. If you are not one of these people, don't even rent Red Room.

This movie was not as bad as some of the other reviews say it is. I give it 5 stars. If you like the Saw movies, you will love this flick. Good plot, cheesy effects, killer soundtrack, and you get bonus trailers for other dvd's. If you like Asian cinama get this one.
Can't wait to see the second one.

Red Room (Daisuke Yamanouchi, 1999)

In the world of extreme Japanese cinema, Red Room has long been somewhat legendary, especially as it was so hard to come by in this country for so long. Unearthed Films, one of the best companies at finding extreme and obscure stuff from around the world that gets overlooked by companies like Facets and Palm, gave it the royal treatment back in February (2008), and it became widely available in American for the first time. Red Room, as it turns out, is one of those movies that just doesn't live up to the hype.

The premise is simple (and you've seen it before in various forms): a number of contestants have agreed to play a game for a large sum of money. They're locked in a room containing various pieces of junk and a deck of cards, all of which are white except one, which has an inkblot of a crown. The person who draws the crown each round gets to dictate one or two people and one action (short, of course, of killing oneself). There are no other rules, and the one who gets the money is the last one alive who hasn't given up.

So, yeah, the premise is a thin skin for an exploitation flick. Which is all well and good; you get a couple of hot Japanese ladies in a room and make them do nasty things, and, well, you've got yourself a guaranteed audience. Problem is, though, doesn't it kind of sound like (fill in your own blank here, but the obvious choice is Battle Royale)? No matter which movie comes to mind when you read that premise, plotwise, characterwise, etc., it towers over this. Yamanouchi, whose corpus is littered with silly exploitation, softcore, and pinky films, is not a man who spends a lot of time thinking about such things, in this movie is no exception. Still, despite its many flaws, I can't deny that it's got a sort of low-rent watchability, a built-in suspense factor given the nature of the game and the way allies and antipathies develop between the characters. (This is about the only real character development in the movie.) It should also be noted that the seemingly twist ending is a complete ripoff, but people who spend more time watching movies than reading books will probably miss that. (Hint: the book was, in fact, turned into a movie, though that particular revelation was left out of the film version.) Still, if there are other choices, strongly consider taking them. * ½

i wasn't completely sure what i thought i would get from Red Room, and sitting through the entire 68 minutes of it got me no closer to finding out. yes, it seems to hope to be a Guinea Pig film, but falls extremely short of that goal. the production value (if it's possible) is even lower than Guinea Pig. it mainly relied on sexuality to present horror, but being persistantly bombarded with it, the viewer becomes desensitized quickly. other "horror" aspects and shock items just seemed stolen from films such as Fudoh - The New Generation & Guinea Pig Devils Experiment i give it 3 stars as my reaction to it was quite neutral.

THIS MOVIE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!! This Japanese movie is very good, but it made my stomach sick after watching it.

Red Room is about four people locked in a room playing a card game. The one who gets the KING card gets two people, and they have to do what the person tells them to do.

This movie is not for kids. Of course, everybody knows that right?

What would you do for money and fame? Would you subject yourself to horrors, allow yourself to be degraded, take on a glass bottle in a way that might be more than a little ouchie, or worse. That's the question that this movie asks in a bad way, spending more time with ideas that do not take root and instead spend more time sexually tormenting people than anything else. Perhaps that was the idea, too, but the idea was not one that I would have bought had I known that it would have gone the way it was going. No, the box lied to me and I felt sickened by the movie that I received.

So, what was wrong with the movie? Well, there was the plot, the way it was carried out, the things that people thought about doing to one another, and the fact that the game hey played was one that they made up as thy went along. It was a cheap movie, a really cheap movie, and was one that had more in common with a bad skin flick than a morality tale hat twined the Internet and the idea of reality shows together. Basically, there were people placed in room and told that they had to make the other person quit by any means necessary, and the person that would be "dared" to d something would be selected by a random card draw. This starts out with somewhat sexual stances, and ends with terrible thing done in the same manner that the game started out in. And did I mention the cheapness of the movie or the terrible acting? It was truly something that I wish I could take back from each and every cell of my body, knowing that I could have watched anything else and felt better about the outcome.

If you watch the movie, more power to you. I simply want to say that I found it dull in ways that I was not expecting, and that I would throw the beast into the recesses of my mind if that were indeed possible.
Not recommended in any form, even for those who like B-movies or explorations of oddities without name.