The Killing Room

FIRST: Let us FOCUS on the Title's Content and Context: Perhaps the TITLE may sound gruesome... But Let me set the record straight regarding KILLING ROOM's AUDIO! Many reviewers complain about the sound. "Couldn't understand!", "Needed Captions!", they protest! Believe me, as an amateur expert, everything "Audio" here is exquisite; it just doesn't get any better! Is the dialog hard to follow? You bet it is! And this is EXACTLY what 32 year-old South African Director Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls/Rings) wanted! Stress/Tension levels tend to go through the roof when you're under constant duress about having missed something crucial. Don't worry! I guarantee You won't!

KILLING ROOM does have similarities to most of the films it's compared to here. However, IMO it bears, by far, the greatest similitude to Spain's La HABITACION De FERMAT (FERMAT's ROOM). FOUR nothing-in-common strangers have responded to a Want Ad for "Test Subjects".

And, From the get-go, they're told that "They will be given $250 each, for their participation/ co-operation. One by one they will be eliminated from the experiment. However, they ALL will receive $250, irrespective of the order of their elimination!" What someone SHOULD have requested was: "Define ELIMINATION"!

Surprisingly well done ensemble acting, with Timothy Hutton, Chloe Sevigny and Peter Storemare the most noteworthy examples. If KILLING ROOM had not lost its iron grip on me for a few minutes about 3/4 through, I would have rewarded it with 10*...A real shame, that! Part Psychological Drama/Suspense, part Mystery/Thriller, part Dark Morality Play, and the fourth component is what makes KILLING ROOM totally unique, makes it stand out head and shoulders above the pack! Unfortunately, the simple act of revealing it would serve as a definite SPOILER!... So you'll just have to see KILLING ROOM for yourselves, won't you? 8*STARS*

..... ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en ESPAÑOL, are most welcome!

When i first started watching this i really got into it but started to lose interest because of a few things - muttering (sometimes you could barely tell what they were saying), Lack of knowing what was REALLY going on that was worth the government to do this to people, Lack of 'twist'.

This movie started off to seem like it was going to be smart with maybe a few twists, but it turned from that to 'who cares lets just get out of this room'.

The ending was actually pretty good, the only problem i had is that i know there's not going to be a sequel and it set it up for one. I know their not making a sequel because it was such a low budget film and people have barely heard of it, let alone enjoyed it enough to sit through another one of these films.

Regardless of how much i liked this film (unless it was just HORRIBLE) i would still like to see a sequel because it left it off in such a way that i think a sequel would be good for this movie for several reasons, because they could do so much more with this story and have a chance to make the next one better and attract more audience members. And partly because i don't like being left in the dark about knowing whats ganna happen next.

One thing i did notice with this film is that it was trying too hard to be like 'Saw', which is alright i don't have a problem with that because they made it into their own thing, but i think a lot of credit of this movie should go to 'Saw'. Although i enjoyed 'Saw' A lot more.

In this review I shall not go deeply into the plot, as I believe that the viewer will benefit from knowing as little of the narrative as possible, seeing as the script offers many twists and turns to any film-goer looking for thrills, and the film delivers on its dark premise, and then some.

While films where a group of characters are manipulated and tested upon in many a sadistic and calculated manner have been all the rage since the Saw series, (comparisons to the franchise wouldn't be completely unfounded) this movie has a somewhat different approach to all the torture porn of late by relying on mind-games to get its thrills. Thanks to the swift pace, taut direction and believable cast, this is pulled off tremendously well.

The plot concerns under-the-radar experiments by a government-tied group (the purpose of which not revealed to the viewer until later) on a group of random volunteers. It starts off innocently enough when they are asked to fill out a form of questions, but things take a sudden turn for the sinister, and the group starts acting upon instinct. However they are constantly being scrutinised by a team of psychologists, and through conversations with the leader of the project and a talented new employee, we learn that their every move is anticipated and prepared for. This creates a sense of impending doom, and brilliantly we, the viewer, feel like we are observing them along with their captors.

The performances are incredibly strong and plausible, and as we learn more about the characters and their motives, the suspense and drama feels all the more engaging. While the idea that experiments like this are still being carried out to this day (the film is based upon real experiments conducted by the CIA in the 60's and 70's) is completely impossible, the script makes it feel completely possible. The whole film twists and turns sharply, making for some genuine bite-your-nails, edge-of-your-seat stuff, something which has been missing from thrillers lately.

For fans of this sort of fare, I wholeheartedly recommend this as what is going to be one of the best thrillers of this year. Hell, even if you don't like the genre usually, I think that you should give this a watch. The film will grip you throughout the entirety of its running time until it twists the knife one last time and leaves on a brilliantly sinister note.

To repeat what I read in a previous review-- what did he say? The dialogue consists of a lot of whispering with cuts to much louder sound effects and screaming, forcing you to keep the volume remote in hand. Or, in my case, leading to apologies to the neighbors for the intermittent screaming last night.

More to the point, what did the movie say? It's a suspense/thriller, which keeps you waiting and really hoping that the ending pays you back for the time invested. This movie doesn't. The ending forces the viewer to realize how implausible the whole premise is.

I won't spoil the ending except to say that the ending is spoiled by the time you get to it.

Although it isn't one of the top films I've yet seen I found this one worth watching. It is a sort of mind-game movie. It was only at the last few minutes that you truly understand what the hell you had to make of it all.

One of the reviewers said it was a waste of time saying that is was for the most part filmed in one room and the low budget statement. Well, let's watch 12 Angy Man, to my opinion one of the best movies ever, there is only one room where the entire movie plays out!

If you like mind-game movies, thriller and secret organization performing (brutal,but not sick-) mind game experiments (where people do die) you should watch this one.