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List Price: $19.95 | | Label: Genius Entertainment
Salesrank: 21268
Released: October 13, 2009 |
| Our Price: $6.33 |
| Used Price: $2.14 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
In this highly charged, psychological thrill ride four strangers are recruited as volunteers in a scientific research study. But they soon find that they are pawns in a classified government program to determine the breaking point of the human mind. As the experiments are conducted with each unwilling participant, the sterile white room becomes a horrible nightmare where the endgame is survival itself.
The Killing Room Reviews:
A lot of wasted potential here. 
2009-12-11 - The Killing Room (Joanthan Liebesman, 2009)
The Killing Room is one of those movies that could have been really, really fantastic if it had been tweaked just a little bit more. Which is kind of surprising given that it was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, previoiusly responsible for such deathless cinema as Darkness Falls and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Maybe this means Liebesman is finally starting to hone his chops as a director of movies that actually want to build suspense instead of splashing the screen with very unsuspenseful gore. He's still got a lot of work to do, but at least this is kind of promising. Das Experiment it is not, by any means, but it's miles better than Darkness Falls.
The plot revolves around four people who have volunteered to take place in a seemingly innocuous government experiment. They are Paul (Drumline's Nick Cannon), Kerry (Identity's Clea DuVall), Crawford (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men's Timothy Hutton), and Tony (Splinter's Shea Whigham, whom I think I've seen in at elast five movies in the past three months). Monitoring the experiment are longtime government official Dr. Phillips (Bruiser's Peter Stormare) and his brand new assistant Ms. Reilly (American Psycho's Chloe Sevigny). Everything starts off nice and simple, but Phillips throws a monkeywrench into the works almost immediately, and Reilly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about the ethics of psychology as the experiment progresses.
This is another one of those movies (like The Death Factory Bloodletting, above) where the screenwriters, in this case Gus Krieger (his first work) and Ann Peacock (Kit Kittredge: An American Girl), put together a cast of characters who seem tailor-made for this sort of thing, and then do very little with the results. The relationship between Paul and Tony, for example, ricochets back and forth between animosity and soulmate without any real reasoning, and Reilly's qualms, though we get a depiction of them now and again, don't really seem to be based on any deep-seated personality traits. (This makes one of the big plot twists towards the end of the film simultaneously predictable and disappointing; you know it's going to happen, and you want to throw popcorn at Liebesman for making the fact that it's going to happen so obvious.) For what it's worth, if you take out the character development factor, it's not an awful script, but how can you take out the character development factor when you compare it to the movie's obvious father figure, Das Experiment? That one has everything this one does, but the strength of Hirschbiegel's characters makes it a much more satisfying exercise in tension.
Worth seeing if you're a fan of one of the principals, but ultimately just a way to waste an hour and a half while waiting for something better to come on. **
Lab Rats... 
2009-11-27 - THE KILLING ROOM takes four unsuspecting subjects, including Timothy Hutton (The Kovac Box) and Clea Duvall (How To Make A Monster, The Grudge, Identity), and plunges them into a psychological nightmare. The four are trapped in a white room w/ no exit, and forced to answer a series of questions. The "wrong" answer can and does mean certain death for one of them. Meanwhile, the mysterious folks behind this insane experiment observe and manipulate from their perch above the sterile room. Peter Stormare (8mm, Unknown) and Chloë Sevigny (Zodiac) are in the control center. Sevigny's character begins to have problems w/ what is happening, as well as her own role in it. Will she help these poor people, or will she choose to follow her orders? Several lives are at stake, but in the end we learn the final, soul-scorching secret and realize that this isn't just some sort of sadistic experiment after all. It is the gang-raping of the human mind in order to fulfill a diabolical purpose. Dark stuff indeed. Highly recommended...
Dont waste your time 
2009-11-21 - Thats 90 minutes of my life I wont get back, dont waste your time on this movie
The Killing Room, sucked the life out of the viewer.
2009-11-14 - Once you get past the Doctor's mumbling, the first 30 minutes sets up as an unusual film. Then it gets flat out boring. It goes nowhere. Spend your time and money on something else. I'd like to give it NO STAR at all. I'm "horrified" I wasted my time.
tedious thriller 
2009-11-10 - DARKLY DISTURBING FILM THAT BECOMES TEDIOUS IN ITS DELIBERATE PACING. IT'S NOT BORING..I FOUND MYSELF INVOLVED. IT'S OBVIOUS FROM THE BEGINNING THAT IT'S SOME KIND OF COVERT GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT. FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS A LITTLE LESS OBVIOUS.
DISCUSSING MORE WOULD INVOLVE TOO MANY SPOILERS. WHILE ASSUREDLY PROVOCATIVE, I CAN'T SAY IT'S ENTERTAINING. THE ACTING OVERALL IS DECENT BUT NICK CANNON'S A WEAK LINK. CHLOE SEVIGNY, TIMOTHY HUTTON AND SHEA WIGHAM COME OUT ON TOP.
THE TERROR OF SECRET EXPERIMENTATION IS PRESENTED FEARFULLY BUT BSOME OF IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.
