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List Price: $19.95 | | Label: Genius Entertainment
Salesrank: 45899
Released: October 13, 2009 |
| Our Price: $6.33 |
| Used Price: $2.10 |
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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:
(2.5 STARS) The Thriller Has Some Moments Despite Plot Holes 
2009-12-19 - Four individuals are ushered into a small room, where they are told to fill in the questionnaire they are given. They are Crawford (Timothy Hutton), Kerry (Clea DuVall), Paul (Nick Cannon) and Tony (Shea Whigham). Obviously there are no connections between these people, except that they all have volunteered for the scientific or psychological researches conducted by some institute. But one terrible thing happens and they realize that what they are asked to do is something far more difficult than they expected, including their own survival. After all, the film's title is "The Killing Room."
The premise of the film might remind you of some of the recently-made thrillers (like "Cube" and "Das Experiment"). Part of the film's uniqueness, however, derives from its subplot (or main plot) about those who are observing the consequences of their researches. Chloë Sevigny plays a young, ambitious researcher Ms. Reilly and Peter Stormare, Dr. Phillips, her supervisor. As you see, there is a political message in the film reflecting the post 9/11 world, which you may find thought-provoking, or just absurd.
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" "Darkness Falls"), "The Killing Room" provides enough suspense to keep you interested in the story, but perhaps you shouldn't look for coherent logics here. Also, those who are intrigued by its "MK-ULTRA" premise, a code name for certain governmental research program, will find that the film's story has little to do with the real-life counterpart. Well, but who knows?
The thriller has some moments, especially its "countdown" sequences, and the actors all turned in very good performances. "The Killing Room" is fairly thrilling though you just cannot ignore its obvious plot holes.
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.
