[Panic Fest 2020 Review] The Room's Messy Second Act Muddles the Third

“Be careful what you wish for,” has been a warning since time immemorial. Most famously used in the 1902 story “The Monkey’s Paw,” the concept of wishing for something, only for it to backfire tragically has been mined in television episodes of Twilight Zone and The Simpsons to films like Pet Sematary and The Brass Teapot. You’d think by now our protagonists would realize that everything comes with a price tag. 

The couple in the unfortunately named The Room (no, not that one) apparently never read “The Monkey’s Paw” and are about to learn the hard way that if a supernatural object is willing to give you anything you want, it probably is too good to be true. Kate (Olga Kurylenko) and Matt (Kevin Janssens) have just bought a house in the country that has had a troubled history. In the 70s, an unknown John Doe (John Flanders) killed the residents before being incarcerated. 

The house is filled with years of clutter and, after throwing out broken furniture and trash, they discover a hidden room. A room where, they quickly discover, anything they wish for materializes with a flash of light. At first, this seems amazing and Matt and Kate live it up, wishing for the most incredible clothes, Mona Lisas, Van Gogh’s, alcohol and more money than you could spend in a million lifetimes. 

After spending a copious amount of time partying it up, Matt pulls Kate into a bedroom he’s fixed up with a baby’s crib. He wants to try to have a kid again. But Kate has already suffered a number of miscarriages and can’t take the loss again. Two events quickly happen, as Matt is out and about and stops to get gas, he discovers the money he willed into existence has turned into ash. 

Even more distressing, Kate has wished for a baby. 

For a good amount of time, writer/director Christian Volkman’s morality tale is happy to settle in that uneasy realm of “be careful what you wish for,” heightened with the addition of a newborn baby thrown in the mix. Earlier, when the couple were partying and drunkenly destroying things, Kate carelessly shrugs it off by saying, “it’s just an imitation. I can get another.” And she’s right. Their precious paintings and billions of dollars and expensive alcohol is meaningless. An afterthought they can just re-wish into existence. 

So what happens when the thing you wish for is flesh and blood? What are the implications of this newly formed life that must operate by the same rules as the dollars bills that rapidly aged and disintegrated outside of the house? Is this baby they’ve named Shane just a figment? A toy or a bandaid for the pain of losing a child? Or is Shane a real, living creature? 

I personally wish The Room continued in this way, picking at the morality and thematically dense implications instead of focusing on the technical nature of the room’s powers. When it’s revealed that items can’t really leave the house without quickly aging/disintegrating, the nature of the story changes from thought-provoking to a ticking time bomb. You know at some point the baby is going to leave the house.

Which leads us to the bonkers third act, where the themes The Room explores changes, yet again, and turns into a weird amalgamation of a psychosexual thriller and science fiction zaniness. I loved some of the more surreal aspects as the film rounds into the conclusion, but it’s married to some rather icky and out-of-left-field developments. It’s not so much that the turn is filled with disturbing and uncomfortable themes, it’s that I don’t think the narrative direction is earned because the second act is messy.

The first two-thirds is full of constantly changing narrative thrusts and thematic jumps that not enough time was spent developing the characters to get to this point. Outside of one quick scene, there’s no connective tissue that brought the characters to the horrific moment they find themselves in. So instead of giving us a gut-punch of a third act and its frankly disturbing denouement, it just felt…well, icky.

That said, the special effects work as the film moves into the surreal ending is fantastic. The production design of the room and the power generator sitting under the house whose wires snake ominously throughout the house is beautifully done. It makes the house become more and more alien and threatening as the characters start tearing into the house’s history--both literally and figuratively. For a mostly one-location shoot, I was surprised at how “big” the movie felt. 

With a stronger second act that framed the narrative more on the implications of having a kid who doesn’t get to experience life outside of the house and is forced through a couple violent age shifts, The Room could have been a disturbing psychosexual rumination on “The Monkey’s Paw.” Instead, the subject matter is treated for shock value. And that’s disappointing.