QUICK REVIEW: Room

Howdy people of the internet, time for a review that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, today I finally get to talk about Room. Now before this film came out in the UK, there was so much buzz around this film for its incredible story and performances, but when I saw the trailers I had no clue what the film was about, and normally if a film can’t give me a feel for what I’m gonna what beforehand it’d be a hard sell. But after so much positive word of mouth from certain online film shows and people that I know, I decided to see what was up, and now I’m gonna pass judgement.

The story can be described as the following:

“After five-year-old Jack and his mother escape from the enclosed surroundings that Jack has known his entire life, the boy makes a thrilling discovery.”

This film was quite captivating because of the sheer concept of what took place, from start to finish it was an engaging and dramatic experience. Now I find it a little hard to talk about this film without discussing spoilers because it is those details that reveal this story’s brilliance in the mystery, tension and discovery of key elements as to why I liked this film, but I’m going to be as vague as possible. What this film did well was paint a picture of an incredibly strange scenario, which as the film went on, you discovered just how complicated and difficult it was for this mother and son to operate within the confines of the room, and how, no matter how hard things got, they needed each other to keep going. There was so much drama emotionally and psychologically, things got pretty melancholy and traumatic, but then there were some humourous and absolutely beautiful moments that made me SO happy as well. I will admit that this film felt very similar to A Place Beyond The Pines or Cast Away where the first half of the film was much more engaging than the latter and people who have seen said films may be able to understand what I mean by that. That’s not to say that the parts beyond the escape was bad, I just had a preference on the earlier half where things were a little more mysterious, difficult and confined.

As for the performances, damn, all I can say is well done to the cast involved especially when it came to Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. Firstly Brie Larson, talk about a breath-taking performance. Larson played Joy “Ma” Newsome and she was so good as a mother who was doing her best to protect her son physically and mentally, but also having to deal with her own personal issues which came with being a mother and adapting to a life that felt so trapped and dehumanizing. Not to be outdone Jacob Tremblay was insanely talented as Jack Newsome, As usual child actors can fall into one of two categories; pretty good or pretty bad, and luckily Tremblay fell into the former. Jack was a really interesting character as we got to see him adapt and learn about the world from a very different way that most kids grow up, and we see a lot of the film through his eyes (kind of like Rugrats), and learning about how he interprets things, what should and shouldn’t be done and seeing the strong bond he had to his mother so was fascinating. Seeing Joan Allen again was great as she did a fine job as Nancy Newsome, her scenes with Jack and Joy were some of the most powerful moments in the film, and it was also interesting to see William H. Macy as Robert Newsome, his character was good and had some interesting moments in the film too. Sean Bridgers as Old Nick was very good and Tom McCamus was also great as Leo.

In conclusion Room was a very interesting, dramatic and thought-provoking experience that had absolutely stellar performances from the leads Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, and a story that was very compelling to watch. I now see why so many people were talking about this film during its main release in the US and while it isn’t my favourite of the Oscar-nominated films of this year, it certainly is in the top three and I wish it nothing but luck at the Oscars.

Rating: 8/10

So have you seen Room and if so what did you think of it? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below and I’ll see ya on the next review, laters! 😀