Believe it or not I watched "Room" on a whim. All I knew about it was that Brie Larson, who I absolutely love, was in it and that I shouldn't watch any trailers or look up any reviews for it. Now I fancy myself as a guy who likes almost everything I watch. I try to find some good in everything, so when it comes to the good films that come out every year, the ones that get all of the awards nominations and such, I get even more excited. That's because I'm going into something that will no doubt engross me and make me happy on some level. Brie Larson is masterful and the child actor, Jacob Tremblay, accents everything she does with an amount of realism you don't normally see out of actors his age. "Room" is a film that took me by surprise and never let go.
"Room" follows the story of a 24 year old, Joy (Larson), and her five year old son, Jack (Tremblay), as they live in a small one room enclosure. All it has is a small kitchen, a couple of beds, a skylight and no way to leave. It is revealed that Jack has been living here since he was very young and the room is all that he knows. As Jack begins to question everything he was told when he was younger, tensions begin to arise between him and his mother. That is until one day when Joy devises a plan that will let Jack leave their room. It will change both of their lives forever.
Films that are largely based around only a few people, living life, conversing in an intimate setting, dealing with the hardships of life, etc, are ones that I'm really drawn to. It lets the person writing the film and the person directing a film get us into the characters that we're supposed to get inside the minds of. In "Room" we're drawn to get into the minds and thought processes of a young mother and her five year old son that are trapped in this room. Brie Larson plays Joy with the urgency, care and loving that you expect any mother in her situation to have. The emotion pours out of her in every scene. While everything she does is entirely believable, because we're in her mind with her. She is at her wits end and it's getting harder and harder for her to hide her horrid situation from her child. The same can be said for Jacob Tremblay playing five year old Jack. He is a child who was largely raised in one room, never allowed to leave and only has limited knowledge of the outside world. He's beginning to get to the age where he questions things, he wants to know why his mother is telling him different things and why things have to change. You root for him to get out and then break out of his shell once he leaves. Jack is a kid you can root for and Tremblay plays him in the heroic way he deserves. You can say the same heroic actions were done by Joy as well. The writer of the novel "Room," by which the film is based, Emma Donoghue, also wrote the screenplay. She put the same amount of love into crafting who we watch the film, as I assume, who we would read in the book. Lenny Abrahamson, the director, also took the time to bring to life the characters from the novel and screenplay, in a believable, emotional and real way. This score was fitting, the length was perfect and just about anything else I could come up with right here would be glowingly positive as well.
"Room" is a film I really tried to not spoil in this review cause it's best if you experience it for the first time with as little knowledge as possible. I've included the trailer below, in case you decide you still want to watch it before diving in. The performances by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay are honestly two of the best of the year. The story is a great one, filled with brilliant emotion from start to finish. It was one of my favorite 2015 films and I'm glad it's getting recognition at awards shows. There was honestly only a handful of films better than "Room" this year. It is definitely worth your time.
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