Review of Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson

If there’s one thing you learn about yourself as a movie lover running a blog that primarily runs movie reviews, it’s this: there are a ton of movies in the world that you know about, want to watch, but choose to watch something else instead when Friday night rolls around.

Lately, I’ve been getting around to those kinds of movies. I had a lot more time to dedicate to my blog, as I was unemployed for a bit as I waited around for a visa that would never come. More on that in a blog post later, as it was the most shocking process I’ve ever been through when it comes to a visa or going to another country for study.

Anyways, while I was waiting for the visa that would never come, I spent quite a bit of time in this unemployment era watching movies and working on my blog to fill the time. This is a monetized website; the ads you see floating around are a source of income for me and other bloggers. That’s how I stayed afloat during this period!

I watched Room one day because my Netflix account was recommending it to me. I knew about this movie for a long time, but never got around to watching it under the excuse I had no time and other, better things to watch. Well, I had nothing to do in this period, so I pressed play and sat back.

And what a wild ride this movie was. I only knew the basic synopsis, and did not expect the movie to go as deep as it did.

Let’s get into the review!

A woman and her son are violently trapped in a room by a man.

In this movie, Brie Larson portrays Joy, who’s 24 and has a five-year-old son named Jack. Together, they live in a tiny room that lowkey looks like a basement, and they’re not allowed to leave. There isn’t really any light in the room either and they just refer to their home as “Room.”

Jack’s father is a man who kidnapped Joy seven years ago, when she was just a teenager, and holds them there hostage. He rapes her, which is how Jack was born, but Joy sends Jack into the closet to sleep when this happens so her son doesn’t know the reality of their situation. Jack also doesn’t know there’s a world beyond Room, one where they could have a better life in.

Joy enables this, as she doesn’t want Jack to think that their situation is at bad as it is. It doesn’t help that she’s depressed and malnourished, but with the help of their little television, she convinces him the outside world isn’t real.

Things change when Jack’s father, Old Nick, comes in and tells Joy he lost his job. Jack is sent into the closet, but in the middle of the night he wanders out and finds Old Nick in bed with his mom. Joy isn’t thrilled to see him there, and she protects Jack from Old Nick.

However, this angers him, and he cuts their power. No longer with heat, Joy decides it’s time to do something. She tells Jack about the real world beyond their walls, which he has a minor meltdown and doesn’t believe at first. Jack fakes a fever, which Old Nick says he’ll get meds for, but then they pretend Jack is dead so it gets him outside of the Room.

Nick takes Jack away on his truck, and despite being overwhelmed by the real world, Jack flees from the truck and starts calling for help. Nick tries to take him back into the truck, but a passerby is there, and he flees. Jack is taken by the police, who are confused by his statements and reactions, but they are led back to Room with Joy still inside.

Both are taken to a hospital, and Nick is arrested. Joy’s parents take her in, but she’s shocked to learn they divorced and her mother has a new man. Her father refuses to accept Jack, who then has a terrible time in the real world and tells his mother he wants to go back to the Room.

Joy also is struggling with her mental health and lashes out at her mother. In order to get some money, she agrees to a televised interview, but then breaks down in the middle of it. After, she tries to kill herself, and Jack finds her. Joy ends up back in the hospital.

Now without his mother for a bit, Jack slowly gets into the rhythm of his new life. He makes a friend, and even cuts his hair and has it sent to Joy to show that he has moved on. She eventually comes home, and the two of them decide to live life to the fullest.

Jack requests to go back to the Room one last time, and the police grant it. Jack realizes how small it actually is, and the two say their goodbyes one final time before the movie ends.

Overall Thoughts

I think it’d be a little cruel to say this is an enjoyable movie, but it is a solid one. That’s more of an appropriate way to describe it—it feels a bit more callous to be like “oh I liked watching this” when the characters are put through traumatizing experiences. They’re going to deal with that for the rest of their fictional lives.

Despite that, there’s a lot of hope this movie ends with, and I like that. We don’t focus on the guy who did this to them, but instead on the pain and grief the characters faced but also their optimism in the end. Very good acting from the two leads because of this, especially the actor who portrays Jack.

I don’t know if I would return to this movie in a hot minute, but I am glad I watched it. We hear a lot of stories like this in American culture, as they’re pervasive when they do happen, and this was an interesting way to dramatize the situation. It does happen, and these are real scenarios sometimes.

Go watch this if you haven’t already and can handle it. You may find it worth it.

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