I am a huge fan of cinema and film . I enjoy a variety of Genre's and Horror is in my top three. I've seen many hundreds of Horror titles over the past 25 years and have had access to movie viewing via many resources. These resources include, owning 700+ DVD's, having every pay per view channel available as well as a fire stick which I can, essentially, view any film ever made.
I write the above caveat only to illustrate that I have sufficient film knowledge and experience to determine what makes a Film "good, bad, worth watching, totally avoiding etc). Now, on to "The Black Room".... Fellow Film Buffs, do yourself a Giant favor and steer clear of this "from the moment the score starts and screen lights up" waste of time.
In a nutshell, IMO, any Horror film that wants to be taken seriously does not use cheesy single instrument (multi instrument keyboard) effects to set the tone for a suspenseful background and score to scene elements which sound more like something a 9 yr. old banged out on his/her "music maker app" on their laptop
3 minutes into this film I sensed I was in for a bad ride, and boy was I right! You would think the seemingly never ending typecast Lin Shaye's presence would at least lend some credibility to this flick....Nope! The beautiful Natasha Henstridge and (not to be mistaken for Lukas Haas) Lukas Hassle add nothing more then eye candy to this flop.
The premise and plot are unoriginal and have been used 100's of times over. The fact that the Director uses a sexual element to drive the "scare" scenes add up to nothing more then a poor attempt at tension, without good results, and are silly. The sexual assaults throughout, driving fear, obviously two primordial instincts humans have had since the beginning of humanity sounds like a very philosophical idea, but, 1+1 don't add up to 2 in this mess.
I refuse to waste more time on going through the plot and the cheesy way it continuously fails to create any fear, tension, elevated pulse rate?, etc. I can only say, it seems Horror is the genre more films are made about year after year and its clear its increasingly harder to find a film with originality in any way shape or form. I'm not saying there are no good Horror films made anymore. I'm saying, it's tough to find a new release worth your 80-110 minutes on average. The Black room is no different. In fact, it's one of the more lower end "B" movies I've seen in a long while with a decent cast.
Horror fans all over, go get a root canal or slam your hand in a car door, it's less painful then this film.
