RavynousHunter

The first three quarters of this movie are pointless filler. Dull, plodding, and paced like a narcoleptic slug trying to push a Rolls Royce up a gravel driveway. If you must watch this movie, skip the first hour or so; its a complete waste of your precious time on this Earth. The last quarter was at least satisfying in a "yeah, wreck those ****" kinda way. Coulda spent that first hour better if I had been sat down on the toilet the entire time.

I went into this movie with rock-bottom expectations. Maybe it was from a spate of absolutely abysmal movies that were billed as "shocking" or "horrifying" or somesuch other nonsense. Room genuinely surprised me, and in a good way. It gets across the extreme stress and horror of Brie Larson's character without being gratuitous. Obvious content warnings include things like involuntary imprisonment, drug use, and sexual assault, though the latter is never directly shown and is made all the more impactful for it, in my opinion. Other tryhard directors would've gone all-in, spending minute after agonizing minute putting the repeat violation of our heroine on full, needlessly graphic display. Abrahamson has shown that he understands the concept of less is more and that one can convey a nightmarish situation without being totally wanton about it. This is also one of the very, VERY few movies that genuinely made me care about a child character. Between Abrahamson's direction and Jacob Tremblay's superb talent (seriously, if the kid keeps giving performances like this, he's got one HELL of a career ahead of him), Jack is...well, he's a character. A lot of directors just toss a child into the mix and assume you're going to care by default and forget that they need to actually BE characters. That, or they make the kid out as being way too well-behaved, outright angelic, or intelligent for someone of their age and it kinda breaks suspension of disbelief. I could legitimately see a kid like Jack existing. He acts like a 5 year-old, for both good and ill. He interacts with his mom and others like a child would, in those circumstances. The 2nd half is also done VERY well. The movie could've easily ended at the closing of the 1st half and nobody would've batted an eye. It also could've easily made the 2nd ****, grimdark borefest being needlessly gritty, miserable, and depressing. Again, nobody would've batted an eye if it'd have done that. But, it didn't. The 2nd half was, to put not too fine a point on it, honest. It was sweet at times. Harrowing, too. Even stressful. Again, though, all done in the right way, at the right times, and handled both maturely and realistically. My wife and I started watching this at midnight, and neither of us so much as had a drooping eye the entire time. Easily one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Its emotional, its honest, and its harrowing without descending into grimdark territory or wallowing in disgusting, pointlessly graphic nonsense. All in all, an excellent movie and well worth watching if you can handle the subject matter.

Another monotone borefest courtesy of Lars von Trier. Not one single character has any feeling in their voice, they sound as if they're reading aloud the contents of every single stop sign in DC. The incalculable boredom is compounded with a juvenile presentation of addiction and sex that would make a middle schooler cringe. It literally tries to draw parallels between the lead "character's" life and fly fishing, as if this couldn't get any more dull. Its like the director tried to make porn with a plot, but failed to have anything interesting happen. Its all shock and no substance, like a link to an old school shock site with zero context. Emotional investment is impossible. Lars should just give up and move to the San Fernando Valley. That's assuming anyone would want to tolerate his presence for more than a few minutes.