Ah, September … and the signs of fall are abundant: the weather is a little chillier, the leaves contemplate their own southward journeys and the theaters abound with ill-considered, poorly acted and unimpressive horror films. Got half an idea and a studio’s ear? You, too, can know the pain of the annual dishonorable mentions list. Today’s sub-mediocre delve into the pre-Halloween parade is The Disappointments Room, a film so poorly conceived it has “disappointment” right there in the title; that’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A couple and their son decide to escape the ghosts of the city by purchasing a rural-ish haunted house. Well, they don’t know it’s haunted, of course. That comes later. Dana (Kate Beckinsale. Wait. Really, that was Kate Beckinsale? Thought I’d be calling out a relative neophyte for needing acting lessons, but no, it’s Kate who is all over the map on this one) is an architect and David (Mel Raido) is … not. Huh. Well, good for you, movie, for not assuming standard gender roles. And that will about do it for the praise.
For an architect, Dana is crappy at her profession. It takes her a day after moving in to realize there’s a room not on the blueprint. You have a blueprint of the big haunted house you bought … but you never inspected the house … not even out of professional curiosity. Geez, folks, did you even have one walk-through before you bought the place? Is anything about that consistent with “SHE’S AN ARCHITECT?” OK, maybe they wanted to get away sooooo badly, they bought sight unseen. Fine. I’ll move on.
Dana investigates and finds The Disappointments Room. I can only presume this is where the dailies are screened. I never tire of deus ex machina exposition, this time coming from a librarian we never met, nor will see again. Legend has it that houses from a certain era used to build a “disappointment room” to hide the children they didn’t want to expose to the public, like Quasimodo, only with American Protestant spawn. This was a thing, apparently. The rooms were essentially home jail. “You’ll come out when you grow that eye again!” I would love to know how much of this is legend and how much is pure fabrication.
Naturally, Dana is drawn to the room, and abducted, sort of. Are there other people living in the house? Are they ghosts? Or is the on-and-oft medicated Dana
just experiencing her own reality? These would be interesting questions to answer if the writing weren’t awful, the direction clumsy, and the denouement substantial in the least. Instead of exploring these questions, The Disappointments Room chose to hint at a sexual relationship between Dana and the local twentysomething handiman, Ben (Lucas Till). Oh yes, please play the “your flirting goes too far” game instead of investigating why Dana got locked in a room by herself and then perceived 15 minutes as ten hours. By all means, go on and share that cigarette and one saucy look in an otherwise antagonistic relationship … I’d much rather see that. Thank you.
I don’t need to tell you this film is a disappointment; it tells you itself. I wouldn’t even recommend The Disappointment Room to horror fans. This is why you pay for James Wan; because scary needs to be scary.
♪Father wears his Sunday kicks
Doesn’t matter what he picks
The man ain’t got a thing to do
Kid is playing near the tomb
Suddenly an air of gloom
Is that mongrel true?
Our house, in the middle of the town
Our house, it is gonna get you down
Our house it has a crowd
There’s always grandpa ghost about
For a dead guy, he’s real proud
Our mum lives in a cloud
Avoiding meds both right and left
Questioning is not aloud
Our house, in the middle of the woods
Our house. Turn this off and watch the Croods♫
Rated R, 92 Minutes
D: D.J. Caruso
W: D.J. Caruso
Genre: Disappointing
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Disappointments
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Rooms
♪ Parody inspired by “Our House”
