Based on the Booker-shortlisted bestseller by Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is a tale of survival and endurance that is by turns harrowing, suspenseful and wondrous. Recounting the story of a mother and child escaping from the captivity in which they have been held for several years, this visionary drama explores the trauma of being stolen from the world—and the marvel of discovering it for the first time.
Born in captivity, five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) knows nothing of the world beyond the shed to which he and his Ma (Brie Larson) are confined. Ma was only seventeen when she was stolen away to this grim place, where her only visitor is Old Nick (Sean Bridgers, Trumbo), her kidnapper—and Jack’s father. After Ma devises a precarious plan for their escape, Jack finds himself thrust out into the world beyond “Room” for the first time, where the array of people, places, and things, of sights, sounds, and sensations, leave him both frightened and awestruck. For Ma, meanwhile, the process of recovery will require just as much courage as her years spent enduring her imprisonment.
Rigorously adhering to the novel’s subjective point of view, Room shows us only what Jack himself sees, brilliantly contrasting extraordinary suffering with the equally extraordinary beauty—and challenges—of ordinary life. While the cast—rounded out by Academy Award nominees William H. Macy and Joan Allen—is uniformly excellent, none stands out more than the gifted young Tremblay, who conveys Jack’s dizzying range of experience with a sensitivity and wisdom far beyond his years.
“In someone else’s hands, Room easily could have become a horror movie. Instead, we get an emotional roller coaster ride—at turns touching, harrowing, crushing and flat-out beautiful…Along the way, Abrahamson’s Room becomes an immensely rewarding film, and the kind of movie that promises to stick with audiences long after the closing credits roll.” (Mike Scott, New Orleans Times-Picayune)
“Amazingly—and this movie is amazing—Room is a story of hope, of possibility. Sure, your stomach will be in knots, your fingers clenched, your heart racing. But it will also fill that heart with a sense of the goodness, the courage, the enduring love that is out there to be discovered – and to be held onto with the fierceness of life itself.” (Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer)
“As wrenching as Room is, especially during its grim first hour, it contains an expansive sense of compassion and humanism thanks to the sensitive direction of Abrahamson.” (Ann Hornaday, Washington Post)