If you take the film Misery and sprinkle it with a little Black Phone, you will get this horror thriller from writer/director Kurt Martin. The Room Below is about a grieving mom who holds a boy hostage who looks similar to her dead son, but there’s also a supernatural presence at play.
The film opens on Mia (Alyssa Sutherland), a waitress trying to make ends meet. When she arrives home after her shift, she’s given the news that her son has died in the hospital due to cancer. A few years later, Mia, now pregnant, has become a children’s book author, but it’s been some time since she’s had a hit. At a reading of one of her books, she hallucinates an image of her dead son Axel walking on the street.
The hallucination causes Mia to join a therapy group for parents who have lost their children. There, her story resonates with John (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and he asks her to coffee so that the two can talk. John himself has lost a son who was abducted and never found. He offers his number in case she ever needs a consoling ear.
One day in the park, Mia meets a young boy named Simon (Gilbert Bradman) and sees a similarity in him to Axel. The two end up bonding, and a kinship seems to form as he comes from a home of abuse and neglect. Simon sees Mia at the park again, and she invites him over. Simon winds up falling asleep at her home, and the next morning Mia wants to show him a room in the basement. Simon discovers that the room which was made to look like Axel’s is actually a trap, and she locks him in. As Simon begins to plot his escape, a sinister entity begins to take control in Mia’s home.
A sinister entity appears in a darkened bedroom in The Room Below.
“…a grieving mom who holds a boy hostage that looks similar to her dead son…”
The Room Below had a lot of potential and ultimately fell short. I picked the film to watch and review because I was a big fan of Alyssa Sutherland and her performance in Evil Dead Rise. I can even understand her choice to play this character and why the director wanted her. The big issue with the film is that it needed to be simplified. I don’t think the film knew what it wanted to be; did it want to be Misery? Or did it want to be Black Phone? Alyssa Sutherland does her best at playing an Annie Wilkes-type character. However, there is an additional supernatural element in the film, which was completely unnecessary as it didn’t add anything to the storyline, nor did it have a resolution.
I’ve always said a smart indie has a limited number of actors, one location, and a good-budget story. This is what writer/director Kurt Martin had, so it’s a head-scratcher how this was a disappointment. One area that I might point to is the supporting character of John. Jonathan Rhys Meyer is a formidable actor, but there are too many conveniences in his character journey. He first meets Alyssa in group therapy; he broaches the topic of the disappearance of Simon with her, whom he has locked up in her basement. He shows up at her house at opportune times to move information along. I could have foregone this character entirely and pressed more into the supernatural presence to execute the story, or focused more on the relationship with Simon and Mia, and his potential plot to escape. It seems Martin has issues balancing the story, and even when the third act kicks in and certain answers are revealed, it’s not a big “Wow!”, but more of a “That’s it?” reaction.
"…did it want to be Misery? Or...Black Phone?"
