The Black Room

A young couple (Natasha Henstridge and Lukas Hassle) moves into the house of their dreams which quickly becomes a living nightmare when they discover a dark secret awaiting them in the cellar.

This film is getting some awful reviews. And yes, indeed, it is not a great movie. But look at it for what it is. I think Rolfe Kanefsky succeeds in what he set out to do -- get together a large handful of genre stars and get them to make a somewhat scandalous horror film.

Honestly, there are far, far worse films out there, especially in the horror genre. This one at least redeems itself by having a sense of humor. And yes, it is more smutty than I typically appreciate in a film, but that is exactly what it set out to be. So I can understand mixed feelings, but the overly negative responses seem harsh.

I am a huge fan of cinema and film . I enjoy a variety of Genre's and Horror is in my top three. I've seen many hundreds of Horror titles over the past 25 years and have had access to movie viewing via many resources. These resources include, owning 700+ DVD's, having every pay per view channel available as well as a fire stick which I can, essentially, view any film ever made.

I write the above caveat only to illustrate that I have sufficient film knowledge and experience to determine what makes a Film "good, bad, worth watching, totally avoiding etc). Now, on to "The Black Room".... Fellow Film Buffs, do yourself a Giant favor and steer clear of this "from the moment the score starts and screen lights up" waste of time.

In a nutshell, IMO, any Horror film that wants to be taken seriously does not use cheesy single instrument (multi instrument keyboard) effects to set the tone for a suspenseful background and score to scene elements which sound more like something a 9 yr. old banged out on his/her "music maker app" on their laptop

3 minutes into this film I sensed I was in for a bad ride, and boy was I right! You would think the seemingly never ending typecast Lin Shaye's presence would at least lend some credibility to this flick....Nope! The beautiful Natasha Henstridge and (not to be mistaken for Lukas Haas) Lukas Hassle add nothing more then eye candy to this flop.

The premise and plot are unoriginal and have been used 100's of times over. The fact that the Director uses a sexual element to drive the "scare" scenes add up to nothing more then a poor attempt at tension, without good results, and are silly. The sexual assaults throughout, driving fear, obviously two primordial instincts humans have had since the beginning of humanity sounds like a very philosophical idea, but, 1+1 don't add up to 2 in this mess.

I refuse to waste more time on going through the plot and the cheesy way it continuously fails to create any fear, tension, elevated pulse rate?, etc. I can only say, it seems Horror is the genre more films are made about year after year and its clear its increasingly harder to find a film with originality in any way shape or form. I'm not saying there are no good Horror films made anymore. I'm saying, it's tough to find a new release worth your 80-110 minutes on average. The Black room is no different. In fact, it's one of the more lower end "B" movies I've seen in a long while with a decent cast.

Horror fans all over, go get a root canal or slam your hand in a car door, it's less painful then this film.

If you go into this movie expecting a great "horror" movie, you'll be disappointed. This is, by far, more of a comedy. Supernatural sexual romps seem to be the focal point of this movie. By no means is it a great movie, or a good one for that matter. It's not low budget. But, some will get a rise out of it.

"The Black Room" starts out at a very good pace and puts the audience into the action from the very beginning. Personally I do like that, especially since sitting for close to an hour whilst the movie is Building up atmosphere and setting the scene can be somewhat tedious. So being through right into the action is always a refreshing change of pace for a horror movie.

The intro sequence, I must take a moment to address that, because it was so out of place with the rest of the movie. Especially because it felt more like a 1970s psychedelic hallucinatory dream high on drugs, and topped off with some odd disco-inspired upbeat music. But about 45 minutes or so into the movie, then that intro actually makes sense.

The effects in "The Black Room" were rather impressive, and visually they were quite convincing. So the special effects and CGI effects team really did a good job in bringing the effects to life on the screen. But the scene where Paul was getting electrocuted in the basement was not the most convincing of scenes due to the questionable effects.

Personally I don't really get the whole thing with hands reaching out from the back for the characters in the movie repeatedly. It was okay the first and second time, but kind of got a bit too repetitive after that.

There is a focus on sexual tones in "The Black Room", which was done adequately enough without crossing the threshold and slipping into being sleazy. But taking into consideration that the movie does deal with a demonic incubus entity, the sexual undertones of the movie do make good enough sense.

"The Black Room" actually has some pretty good names to the cast ensemble. Sure, this is not Oscar winning material, but if you have watched horror movies before, then you should be more than familiar with the likes of Lin Shaye, Dominique Swain and Natasha Henstridge. Lin Shaye had a very small role to play in "The Black Room", which was a shame, because she usually brings a lot to a movie with her mere presence. Natasha Henstridge actually carried the movie quite well, and it was nice to see her back in the horror genre. It was also quite a hoot to see James Duval making an appearance in this movie, despite also only being in a minor role.

Once the movie takes on a possession aspect, there is also an element of comedy added to the movie, which actually sat quite well with the other aspects of the movie. Especially since the comedy was subtle and quite well used.

While this is listed as a horror movie, it is not the type of horror movie that will leave the audience trembling with dread and fear. It is an entertaining enough movie for what it was, but there are better choices if you prefer to be scared witless. "The Black Room" is, however, a rather different kind of horror movie and one that actually was entertaining enough for what it turned out to be.

I have no idea why this is rated so high. I actually had to look it up here to see if it was supposed to be a horror movie or comedy. It is like some trash movie filmed in the 80s. Plenty of nudity though if you are into that sort of thing. It really reminded me of the first Hellraiser. That movie was scary when it came out but if you watch it now it's laughable. At least it had a storyline worth following.