The Killing Room

(2009)

Dir: Jonathan Liebesman

 

Do you accept the Dulux challenge?

It feels as though The Killing Room is trying to be a lot cleverer than it actually is. That’s not to say that Jonathan Liebesman’s intense psychological thriller is stupid; it is anything but. The film deserves a lot of credit for at least trying to provoke thought in its viewer. It’s just unfortunate that what we get isn’t actually that original.

Four strangers are brought into a room together, where they believe they are signing up for some kind of experiment. They’re right. They are. Unfortunately, they are the experiment. Peter Stormare’s dastardly scientist murders one of them, before locking the remaining survivors in, giving them a series of questions to answer or more will die. It’s essentially Saw if Jigsaw was actually working for the government. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh, as there is certainly no gore in The Killing Room, but there is very little in the original Saw either; it is only later than it was raped by the franchise machine.

But Liebesman’s film both feels less and more real than Saw. It isn’t the same visceral experience, but its governmental plot is a very prudent and pressing idea. The four unfortunate unknowns do a very good job in four very difficult roles, with Stormare and Chloe Sevigny providing sterling support as the cold and ruthless instigators of the heinous procedure. So while not the film it wants to be, The Killing Room joins Saw and David Fincher’s overlooked Panic Room as real modern peddlers s of the claustrophobic art.

It might not be Hitchcock, but it is intelligent cinema, and God only knows there isn’t enough of that around.

*** / *****

“The Editing Room.”