The Disappointments Room

Long shelved (filmed in 2014, unreleased until 2016) this cannot decide if it wants to be a haunted house flick, a psychological thriller, family drama, or a routine slasher movie, as a couple, still reeling from the death of their infant daughter, relocate, with their young son, to a remote mansion, for unexplained reasons. Weird things begin happening immediately, but the film implies it may all be in wifey's mind. The discovery of a hidden room, and a black dog prowling the grounds takes the plot into generic possession/ haunting territory, but dead daughter subplot takes it into tragedy/ family drama territory. We are introduced to who I believe was intended to be the token psychic woman, who disappeared as quickly as she appeared, which lead me to wonder why she was even there. Twice the film tried to bring a third party/ love interest into the plot, before dropping one completely, and killing the other, without anything further being mentioned about him. This entire film is like that, with seemingly only the beginning of its plot threads being explored, then dropped entirely. The film never climaxes, so much as it just stops, with nothing remotely close to closure to any of its numerous plot threads. Well acted, and there is enough atmosphere in the Gothic home, but whole chunks of the plot seem to have been edited out prior to release, giving the film an unsatisfactory, unfinished feel.

The Disappointments Room is a disappoi... See what I did there? I delivered the exact line you expected only I half-a**ed it. That in a nutshell is The Disappointments Room; it sets itself up to deliver nothing but the bare minimum and then doesn't even deliver on that. I automatically assumed this film was less than a blip on the radar. A small budget, small minded, small expectation snoozefest comparable to this year's The Other Side of the Door (2016). So imagine my surprise when the credits revealed the movie was directed by D.J. Caruso, the same guy who made Disturbia (2007). What the heck man? What the actual heck? The plot, for what it's worth, concerns itself with a small family of New Yorkers who have moved to the American South to renovate an old antebellum mansion. While touring the grounds Dana (Beckinsale) our intrepid architect, notices a part of the house that's not in the actual blueprints. She prods further, locating the key to the room and deciding what the hay; let's open it up. What she doesn't know is the room also hides secrets that may anger the mansion's ghostly inhabitants and test the limits of her sanity. The film strains mightily to fit every basic haunted house cliché. They include but are not limited to: ghosts standing behind their victims, toys magically appearing, elaborate apparition flashback mode and pets prematurely meeting their demise. Those clichés are then complimented with the sloppiest of editing and laziest of jump scares providing a movie completely lacking atmosphere. What's worse is this faded out dollhouse of a movie comes complete with a boring assemblage of shallow traits and neuroses masquerading as characters, which are thrown about with little regard for perspective, personality or motivation. The most laughable of these paltry characters is Kate Beckinsale as Dana, whose lip-quivering mother in emotional recovery rings egregiously false. She saunters through scenes looking perturbed and has her share of bad dreams which is to be expected. Yet when the film reveals possible psychosis and carelessly lumbers towards a splashy confrontation, it's clear Beckinsale is drowning in a cesspool of offensively bad schizophrenia tropes. This movie was not fun to watch...no surprise there. But it's also no fun to review. There's nothing resembling the ponderous hubris of Warner Bros's DCEU or the desperate "love me, please" attitude of Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). There's no hilariously bad reasoning like in God's Not Dead 2 (2016) or drive-by bellicose like in 13 Hours (2016). The Disappointments Room is the movie equivalent of flat skunk beer. Any processes that were once teaming with life are now dead and baking in the sun, making your patio smell like cat p***. Nothing happens in this film. There are no consequences to sift through, no conclusions to be drawn, no lessons to be learned. If the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference, than the fact that I left this movie feeling nothing should be a testament to just how bad this thing is.

source: The Disappointments Room

10 out of 10 for the one and only Kate Beckinsale. It was really a pleasant surprise to see Kate channel her inner badass werewolf hunter Selene and kill a ferocious dog in this movie. The climactic sequence felt pretty intense. The story is OK. But the character of the contractor Jr. feels underdeveloped. He just died like that? Also, the disappointments room are for children with special needs, who are rejected and locked away by their well-to-be families. So the vengeful spirits should be those children who lingered after death, right? Instead, it was that old guy. It doesn't add up. What is his vengeance for? Speaking of ghost movies starring Kate, I can think of one far better than this: The Haunted (1995). Kate is awesome.

The title of this bomb says everything: It was very disappointing and more than that, it was totally derivative with a soporific script. It is supposed to be the story of, maybe, the ghost of a child living in a limbo and all that blah blah blah that has been used and abused in much better films (e. g. The Ring) Mrs Beckinsale, it seems, was in need of some fast cash and that is probably why she decided to work in this project. The story is so dull and lacking that the director had to resort to loud noises (as always) to tell the audiences that something supposedly interesting was about to happen, or better, to wake up the audiences because this was a pretty boring attempt at making a supernatural film. It is absurd to see that people waste time and money and talent to try and tell a story where absolutely nothing happens. The only way to make a film like that mildly entertaining was to add some gratuitous sex scenes showing Mrs Beckinsale in a shower, having sex with her husband or anything like that; but director and writers could not even think about it. There is nothing here, this is the typical fare of Lifetime and Hallmark networks, a horror story for grannies.

Was drawn into seeing 'The Disappointments Room', with as said for many films seen recently a cool poster/cover, an intriguing if not exactly novel premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive. 'The Disappointments Room', simply put, turned out to be a terrible film and waste of potential with next to no redeeming values and so much done catastrophically wrong. One of the worst films seen in a while, which is saying a lot for somebody who on the most part has been encouraged by their film/television watching and has more often than that been quite generous. Decent idea, horrendous execution. Lets start with one positive. The scenery is atmospheric, if wasted by the schlocky way the film is shot and particularly edited. However, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their irritating and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrate. Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The acting is also terrible, expected better from Kate Beckinsale whose performance is overwrought and anaemic, and the effects are ropy at best. Dialogue can be stilted and rambling while the pace is uneven, dragging in a lot of the first half, which goes on forever and fails to get going, and never is it exciting. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness and the lack of tension and suspense. Too many elements are introduced, and then dropped, barely explored or don't go anywhere, sometimes even all three. A lot of the film completely fails to make sense, both in underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations. There is a real sense that a lot more scenes were filmed and then dropped which explains the choppiness and lack of coherence. The threat is poorly used and poses very little threat. The film completely peters out with one of the most abrupt climaxes/endings seen for any film in a while. Overall, terrible, disappointment is a very apt word to sum it up. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I don't know why this movie is getting such bad reviews! I love this movie, but I do think this movie is a victim of the Relativity media bankruptcy situation. This movie received poor marketing and really deserved better treatment. Kate Was awesome in this movie and the directing was amazing, there was some really cool shots like the one on the hill when the talent is driving, they go up this hill and the shot, I think was great, there were some other ones too like the one in the mirror too. The Disappointments room definitely needs to be checked out, it definitely does not deserve to be poorly reviewed. Please check this film out, do I think it was the best film? No, but it should be watched. You will not be disappointed with The Disappointments Room.

OK I was looking forward to this and I was just satisfied with the movie. It looked good had a dark look and tone but was very average throughout. The acting was quite wooden at times which maybe the script has to be blamed. A few good scares but not enough to warrant a cinema release. I wanted to see it as it's been getting slammed badly. It was not terrible but was not great either. Surprised That the name was what it was should have been called The Room. A not bad score but not enough to spend $13 on this. Should have gone VOD.

I had high hopes for the first half of this movie, but it just falls into a jumble in the last half. So many unanswered questions; a random kite, a random carpenter,etc.. If you want to see a classic with a similar story line, but done much, much better, check out The Changeling, bone chilling Canadian movie from 1980 with George C Scott. Don't be fooled by it's age, it's scary. You can even see it on youtube for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVttK509_JI .....it's basically everything this movie is trying to be except....you know, it makes sense.

I like Kate Beckinsale's acting and when I knew this is a horror movie I was very curious about this movie. Horror movie is one of my favourite genre. So I was eagerly waiting for this movie. the trailer of this movie is not not so interesting but the casting of this movie was quite impressing. Director D.J. Caruso is a talented director and gave us some good thriller movie (Eagle Eye, Disturbia, Taking Lives). But he is not known for horror movie. I was curious how he handle this type storyline the output of his effort was very bad. the beginning of the story is very common and nothing new. But I was waiting for some good punch and twists. But after 20-25 minutes the jump scares started and the movie turned into a very illogical situation. the story is not new and not so convincing. There is nothing really good in this movie and the script was not imposing. Just some very cruel jump scares are the main tagline of this movie and the acting of the lead casts are nothing to shout about. I am not revealing the story but I am just telling you this is a very average and common story line. Direction of the movie is very poor and the pace of the movie is horribly slow. background score was not scary but sometimes bothering. The climax of this movie is very confusing and not convincing. If you have no choice other than this movie and want to scare with some overflowed jumpscares, this movie is for you.