The Black Room

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.

I watched about close to an hour of this trash and just couldn't watch it any more. I heard it was so bad it's good, and I have watched a fair few of the b movies they live up to that standard sadly this one didn't. The acting was terrible I have no idea if it that was intentional or not given the talents from the cast my guess is bad direction. There was no straight forward plot to keep you intrigued , a simple plot line to follow would have made a difference, all I know is a couple bought a house without inspecting it weird things happen for no reason that's about it. I heard it was supposed to be a parody or comedic elements , there was nothing funny at all apart from the bad acting. Dont go by the 9s and 10s of this, it is so bad it is actually bad.

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.

Good intro. Starts out with enough oversexed camp that seems to favor that back in the day horror movie style. Let's me know the tone that I should expect, which I was not expecting cause I was expecting a horror movie trying to actually do horror (At least I'm hoping this movie is not trying to scare me cause it did not work).  Gives the essence that this is going to be a light horror film metaphorically poking fun of the concept of how those slasher movies of the 80s seem to be all about sexual frustration. It was arousing watching  Natasha Henstridge give us a tease as a woman who moves into a house with her husband that seems to be haunted by an incubus (AKA a male sex demon), and of course it possesses her husband than tries to bang everything in sight, except for his extremely hot wife. Give the movie credit for equality as they had scenes of erotic horror that's not focus on women. Not my cup of tea but respect for attempting the balance.

I personally don't see a horror movie here, it's mostly a parody of this, which is not to say it's bad, it's actually really great for what it is, but if you are expecting to be frighten or see some scary monsters that's not gonna happen, but the imagery is definitely really cool to see, and Henstridge is still hot.

http://cinemagardens.com

The Black Room is advertised as a horror comedy, sadly it's very badly lacking in one area and therefore makes for an oddly imbalanced movie.

Telling the story of a couple moving into a new house with a storied past. In the basement is a black room housing an incubus. For those aware of what an incubus is you probably won't be surprised to hear that the film is jam packed with sex and nudity from start to finish to rather gratuitous levels.

With a fantastic cast including Natasha "Species" Henstridge, Dominique Swain and horror icons Lin Shaye and Tiffany Shepis it certainly had the tools to deliver a competent movie.

Sadly this is again where I must come back to the poor blend of comedy and horror. The movie has very little comedy so when humor is attempted it feels very out of place especially considering that the rest of the film is played like a straight horror. Sure it's a tad cheesy but it's still a full on horror film so the brief moments of levity spoil it.

So what with the poor tone balance, amateurish cgi effects (They should have stuck with practical) and a bad story delivery The Black Room will likely appeal to horny teens more than horror enthusiasts.

Not irredeemable, but I'd certainly not recommend this to anyone.

The Good:

Natasha Henstridge

The addition of couple of scream queens for cameos

Solid cast

The Bad:

Really weird balance of comedy and horror

Some really pants sfx