O Quarto dos Esquecidos

When naming your film I would not use and adjective like poor, bad or say disappointment because unless it is really good can come back to bite you. This film uses Disappointments Room and it was very disappointing. I thought it may be interesting, but boy I was completely wrong. Just very poor pacing and editing in this thing. There were times multiple things were happening and I had no idea what was going on. The father was making dinner with two guests while the wife was looking at the hired hand doing something and then this and that happened and I was wondering what the point of this and that was. It was an okay concept and could have worked, but the execution could not have been any more horrid, who the heck do they have writing the scripts to these things? I will say that the film at least looked good and though it was not by a major studio the film at least looked like it was a big Hollywood studio film.

The story has an architect and her husband and son moving into a house that is in pretty rough shape. A very big house, because everyone in real life finds the most broken down looking house they can to move into even though banks kind of frown upon that as do inspectors. Well, the architect has something on her mind as something very predictable has occurred and now strange things are happening in her new house and she soon discovers a strange room not in the blueprints and immediately finds a key and gets told what it is with almost no build up. Soon she is visited by a handyman who seems to serve absolutely no purpose in the film and thankfully the film is over really quickly.

The film just has so many problems. The story is atrocious, how do you make a movie about a room and then make the discovery and getting into the room so anticlimactic? I was expecting the film to progress to an ending that had the main character finally getting into the room to discover a horror like no other. Another problem is the annoying son and father and the pointless handyman that kept flirting and in the end served no purpose. Neither did the one old lady at the library, there is literally a junction where she is looking at old clippings about ghost killing people and then trying to call the architect, but then poof, she is gone too.

This film is a horror film that features ghosts, a haunted house and no payoff. The movie kind of just ends, though they do the obligatory look back and see the ghost standing at the window scene. I can see why this film bombed which is truly pathetic considering it only cost 15 million to make! The actors range from disinterested (Kate) to completely overacting and annoying (everyone else, especially that father). There are a couple of jump scares and a couple of nice gore shots, but overall, this film is a big disappointment.

Saw the movie today. I enjoyed watching Kate Beckinsale and I believe she made her character believable, you feel what the character is going through. However, this was supposed to be a HORROR, not a drama on Lifetime Movie Network. Some revelations are made before the middle of the movie and the pace just slowed and there were no more surprises or plot development. You know that part of a horror movie where the evildoing of the antagonist, the fighting back of the protagonist create a crescendo of visceral emotions in the viewer leading to a catharsis and release, that never happens. There were more than a couple of jump-scares but the possibilities from the plot and the characters just were not followed through and explored enough for the horror to happen for me. Nice story though and definitely worth a watch if you like scary TV dramas.

See if this synopsis sounds familiar: Dana and David Barrow have moved with their son Lucas to a house on the countryside to re-start their lives. Dana, who is an architect, is looking forward to redecorate their new living, but before long, something feel amiss. She seems to be seeing ghosts in the house, which initially is quickly dismissed as her having violent hallucinations from a recent loss, but then she discovers that the house has a sordid history, one that may come and haunt her and her family.

Everyone who has ever seen movies with haunted houses or families struggling with grief can see that they put The Woman in Black, The Sixth Sense, The Grudge, Antichrist, Poltergeist and The Orphanage into a blender for this film. One scene in particular with a boy and a creepy girl in a hallway seems directly lifted from the mother of all haunted house movies, The Shining. Now that could be seen as a respectful homage, but where some filmmakers like J.J. Abrams can combine elements from other movies into something exciting that at least feels fresh, the makers of this jumbled mess of clichés from better movies only produced a bland concoction with a bad aftertaste.

This cannot be pinned on one faulty element in particular, as the lazy script by D.J. Caruso and Wenthworth MIller, Caruso's uninspired direction and the extremely messy editing all carry a big part of the blame for why this movie feels so disjointed and meaningless. It is no secret that big chunks of the movie were edited out (explaining a meager running time of 91 minutes), and it shows. The story sets up several plot points that are simply abandoned later in the movie: for example, there is a subplot featuring a boy, a cat and a big dog that is solely used for cheap shocks and manipulated emotion, because it plays no role in the resolution of the story whatsoever.

All that happens seems to be in service of predictable scenes that aren't tense or suspenseful, since they lack a steady hand in direction, and everything can be seen coming from miles away. It all culminates in a ridiculous dinner scene that should have been the pay-off from previously established emotions and storylines, but since so much information and character development seems missing, it fails miserably. And it is topped only by a 'finale' that is so laughably weak, abrupt and unsatisfying that it gives new meaning to the term 'anti-climax'. As if writers and director couldn't come up with a good ending, so they didn't bother to write one, and just skipped to the end credits.

Kate Beckinsale is at the center of the story, and at least she does a decent effort to keep the viewers interested, something which can't be said of Mel Raido as David, whose wooden performance almost resembles an alien trying to do an impression of a human. Lucas Till's only reason for being here seems to create unease, and he also disappears from the story before he can do something meaningful. If there is some praise, it goes to the photography and the music, which both give the movie some edge over other B-horror movies.

Really a missed opportunity for D.J. Caruso, who has shown with Taking Lives and Disturbia that he could make a suspenseful movie.

Oh yeah, we know the type. September and January releases are generally known as movie dump months, after a busy period of cinema releases. A lot of the films released in this time period are films studios just needed to stick in to release. Generally these films are not good. The Disappointments Room does not go against the mold. After I watched the film I was kind of hoping I didn't as it pretty much offered nothing worthwhile during its entire duration.

The film is about a mother (played by the lovely Kate Beckinsale), her son and husband who move into a house where creepy occurrences take hold. She soon discovers a "disappointments room" in the attic where children with special needs or deformities were locked up. The spirits of the past start haunting her and she has a hard time separating reality from this new world she unlocked. Its a typical horror premise. Can I even call this horror? There isn't one scare in the film. Nothing that will stay with you. There aren't even any jump scares. In this day and age you'd expect something startling from a horror film but nothing really ever comes. As the film progresses you want to stomach less and less of it. If you've seen as many horror films as I have, you want something original, ambitious, or frighteningly entertaining. Unfortunately, this rarely happens.

I love Kate Beckinsale. She's an ageless beauty who I love watching on screen. I'd say she's the only reason you'd want to check this film out. She needs to pick better stuff for herself. She's been in some bad stuff but shes just wasted here. The guy who played her husband seemed like a caricature, his line delivery seemed so forced. He was basically the prototypical husband who doesn't see whats going on. Lucas Till was an entirely useless and creepy in the wrong kind of way character. I don't like the idea for the film but there could have been better delivery. Wish-washy editing of a bunch of "scary" images jumbled together is not enough to be memorable.

I know its my fault for getting sucked into this (damn you sexy Kate Beckinsale!) but as an avid film lover I'm always willing to give everything a chance in search of finding an inspired work. There's no inspiration here. Just a tired picture filled with nothing essential. You'll find scarier things in your day to day life than this mediocre effort. Skip it. There's too many puns I can do with the title of this film to convey how bad it is but I'll save you all the torture.

4/10

Long shelved (filmed in 2014, unreleased until 2016) this cannot decide if it wants to be a haunted house flick, a psychological thriller, family drama, or a routine slasher movie, as a couple, still reeling from the death of their infant daughter, relocate, with their young son, to a remote mansion, for unexplained reasons.

Weird things begin happening immediately, but the film implies it may all be in wifey's mind. The discovery of a hidden room, and a black dog prowling the grounds takes the plot into generic possession/ haunting territory, but dead daughter subplot takes it into tragedy/ family drama territory. We are introduced to who I believe was intended to be the token psychic woman, who disappeared as quickly as she appeared, which lead me to wonder why she was even there. Twice the film tried to bring a third party/ love interest into the plot, before dropping one completely, and killing the other, without anything further being mentioned about him.

This entire film is like that, with seemingly only the beginning of its plot threads being explored, then dropped entirely. The film never climaxes, so much as it just stops, with nothing remotely close to closure to any of its numerous plot threads.

Well acted, and there is enough atmosphere in the Gothic home, but whole chunks of the plot seem to have been edited out prior to release, giving the film an unsatisfactory, unfinished feel.