Breathing Room

I generally like movies where a group of strangers are isolated and pitted against each other because they offer a portrayal of Darwinism at work. I like the mystery of it. Who has what it takes to survive and to what lengths are they willing to go to make it happen. This could have been interesting even though it's not an original concept. What ruined it for me was the end of the film, because the audience is deprived of any explanation about the point of it all. Why did all this just happen? Was there a purpose? What the heck was the purpose? I have no idea. I would advise skipping this one unless you literally have nothing better to do with your time.

14 strangers suddenly wake up and find themselves locked away in a room with no exit. They are apparently part of an elaborate game, where you must solve the riddles else you keel over and die. And all this on a budget probably even smaller than that of Cube...

You can not help but compare. And the comparison does this movie no favours. Acting is nowhere as good, execution is comparatively poor and their is no excuse for the sound guy being on Prozac during the shoot. That said a couple of actors give good, if flawed performances: David Higlen as Harry, Michael McLafferty as Lee and Brad Culver as Six.

The action moves at a pedestrian pace and the suspense is an illusion, that fleets away after a glimmer. Its not all bad, but really tiresome in the end and wouldn't want to repeat this experience. But well... at least it wasn't a Saw ripoff... so its not all bad.

This film is for the most part just like the "Saw" series. More like Saw 1 actually then the other two though. You basically have a group of kidnapped people trapped in a room where they're picked off one by one till there is one person left who then gets to go free. The only real difference is this film is horrible. The sound effects were so fake sounding, the characters were annoying at best and the story went basically no where. The twists in this film were so lame and didn't really change the plot at all. It just wasn't scary enough either. You never see anything graphic which also brings this movie down. The Saw series completely blows this film out of the water. I'd pass on this one.

The film begins with a naked woman entering a room of strangers with in a warehouse type of setting. The strangers approach her and begin asking questions about who she is and what does she know about why she is here and what it's all about. The rest of the film involves learning about each other and little more about the "puzzle" of why they are here.

The premise is that there is game being played with the characters' lives. There are rules. If you break the rules, you die.

The plot is simple, but the interactions of the "players" is what keeps it interesting. Each "player" is unique and may or may not have something to hide.

I found the story interesting, but contrived. Some of the characters were a bit over-the-top for my taste, but most of them conveyed the fear, anger, and despair quite convincingly. The end of the film was a disappointment to me for reasons I won't divulge here.

I credit the producers for developing a good character study with very little investment. Good cinema doesn't always have to cost millions.

If you like a bare bones type production about human behavior in stressful conditions, then I recommend this to you.

Breathing Room pits fourteen strangers in a room to play a game. Tonya is the final contestant to be thrown naked into a room with thirteen other contestants wearing collars.

Each contestant finds a clue with their "game" clothes. When the lights go out and the game begins, people start dying. Each death brings new clues to the game. What brought this group together? Are they connected somehow? Is one of them the killer?

Saw was the first movie that I thought of when I saw a group of abducted strangers forced to play a game.

The problem with "Breathing Room" isn't just the lack of originality, it's that there aren't really any engaging characters. We don't identify with these people and none of them are appealing. We don't care about any of these characters!

The movie doesn't even work as mindless entertainment. It's boring!