This Creepy Psychological Horror Is a Reminder To Be Careful What You Wish For

For as expansive and experimental as the horror genre is, so many movie plots can be reduced to “be careful what you wish for.” And it’s understandable why so many filmmakers love this premise. In a medium built around people undergoing terrifying experiences, having someone’s own choices come back to haunt them is always horrific to watch. Yet rarely do these films actually unnerve viewers due to how unbelievable their stories are. The concept of angry genies or random puzzle boxes limits the audiences’ ability to really connect with the protagonists and feel their anguish – and then there’s the 2019 horror thriller, The Room.

Directed by Christian Volckman, The Room begins with a couple who discover a wish-granting room in their new house. Their revelry at the beginning of this discovery is destined to become something terrible by the movie’s end. It’s a storyline that viewers have seen many times before, which makes it so much more shocking once audiences learn how much depth these characters hold. How their wanton wishing covers up a deep sorrow and that they recognize how utterly useless things become when you can have anything you want. The film sets itself apart early by offering genuinely resonant characters, ones who the audience can understand and see themselves within – which is why the horrible things they go through are so unbearable to watch.

Everything You Want Exists in ‘The Room’

The Room’s main protagonists are Kate (Olga Kurylenko) and Matt (Kevin Janssens), a young New York couple who are eager to move into their new house. In a way that most other movies forget to do, this plot humanizes the characters, portraying them as authentically plain in their wants for nothing but to live a life together. This goal is disrupted slightly when they discover that the old building was once the site of a horrific murder, but this doesn’t slow them down as they try to turn it into a true home. They’re an endearing couple that audiences will find themselves quickly liking, making their eventual discovery of a wish-granting room in the house feel almost deserved.

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As the film delves deeper into its more magical elements, it provides the montages that almost always accompany movies like these, with viewers watching Matt and Kate wish for ancient artifacts or stacks of cash to celebrate their new find. Yet even before they start wishing, Kate rightfully calls out how scary this kind of situation is, thinking critically about how unnatural this phenomenon is and that they shouldn’t play with something that they don’t know the consequences of. Her husband convinces her to indulge in the magic, and they do; but soon audiences learn why Kate knows how meaningless the things they create are. She reveals how she’s suffered two miscarriages, a pair of utter heartbreaks that have left the couple broken and has helped her realize how little items – even ones conjured in a magic room – matter when the world seems intent on not letting her have the baby she truly wants. It’s a grounded, extremely compelling take on the typical wish scenario; one that highlights the flaws of this subgenre and signals to viewers that these are definitely not the flippant horror protagonists they may be used to. It explains why she knows the room can never make them happy with random objects, and why she instead uses it to wish for a baby.

‘The Room’ Is as Unconventional as an Adoption Story Can Get

The horror of The Room begins subtly at first, with this wish creating a baby for Kate to fawn over while Matt keeps his distance, horrified at what she’s done. Some digging on his part reveals that the murder committed in their building years ago was by a similarly wished child, “John Doe” (John Flanders), who tells him two very important pieces of information: anything that strays too far outside of the house will wither up and die, and the only reason he was able to live outside is because murdered his parents, trading their lives for his. Matt keeps this information from Kate, hoping she’ll accidentally kill the baby by taking it outside. Viewers watch in horror as she does so, but this only ages the baby into a small child, Shane (Joshua Wilson). Most of the film delivers this kind of unnerving shock, as the little boy questions his own existence and the people who he believes are his parents play with his very life by creating a rollercoaster of discomfort for all. He never asked to exist, yet he finds himself in a world he doesn’t know with two people who have conflicting beliefs on whether he should live or die. It’s a startling situation that the movie grants audiences an intimate view of – which almost makes you understand the horrifying things he does in the movie’s climax.

Few horror films are able to be as jaw-dropping as The Room’s final act without resorting to some kind of gory face-off between our protagonists and their monster. Yet The Room’s fear is, unfortunately for all watching, so much more complex than that. Shane’s desperation to live and be loved by his parents pushes the boundaries of just what this magical room can conjure up and traps our protagonists within an endless nightmare. This climax builds off of small moments throughout the movie to create an unnerving ending, one that sees the life journey viewers witnessed this man (with the mind of a toddler) experience pay off in a genuinely sickening way. Without going too far into spoilers, the movie’s end is one of the most desolate of any in this subgenre. The nuance that this plot applied to its concept shows in the quietly haunting questions the last few scenes leave our main pair stuck with. And with so much time being put into making each one a fleshed-out, recognizable character, audiences can only watch in agonizing disappointment as the couple realizes the room that can grant anything has taken away everything.

Make a Wish in ‘The Room’ And Lose Everything Else

For as inventive as The Room is, it certainly isn’t the first film in this subgenre to stress the consequences of its concept by placing the characters in a complex emotional situation. Films like Wish Upon offer a similar approach to the premise. Yet, too often, these films fail to ground themselves outside of the wishes, allowing their whimsical magic to overshadow the characters’ core emotions and take away from the feelings that drove the characters in the first place. With The Room, the subgenre finally has a film that recognizes how little the actual wishing mechanic matters, and instead spotlights the plight of our main couple and the horror of getting the thing you wanted at a truly terrible cost. With the ending scene being as haunting as it is, and with the film putting our likable pair through such disturbing experiences, there’s only one message that audiences can take away from a plot as distressing as this: be careful what you wish for.

The Room is currently available to stream on Shudder in the U.S.

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