ROOM

4 stars (out of 5)

This hard-to-describe effort from director Lenny Abrahamson (whose completely different Frank was a weird character comedy) features a truly star-making performance from Brie Larson, who beat Emma Watson, Shailene Woodley and Rooney Mara to the role and now looks set to be The Next Big Thing™.

Larson’s long-unnamed ‘Ma’ lives in ‘Room’, a cramped 10-by-10-foot space, with her smart little son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who’s just turned 5 (although Jacob’s a bit older than that) and has never known anything but ‘Room’. Abrahamson and scriptwriter Emma Donoghue (drawing from her novel) keep the truth about their situation uncertain for about half this one’s running time, leaving you wondering what’s going on. Is there maybe something wrong with Jacob requiring his confinement? Is Ma mad and Bad Boy Bubby-ish business is afoot? Has an apocalyptic event transpired, perhaps? And who is ‘Old Nick’ (Sean Bridgers), the strange man who regularly appears to bring supplies and take what he wants from Ma?

The claustrophobic mood has to stop, however, as Abrahamson could never keep it up (and the audience would be too traumatised), and if you’ve seen this one’s poster or trailer you know that somehow the questioning Jack does get out of ‘Room’ and experiences the full force of the fearsome outside world as it falls upon his head. As his narration notes, things out there keep “happening, happening, happening, it never stops!”, and they’re so full of wonder and terror that it could be more than poor Jack can handle. If only the world beyond ‘Room’ was as easy and understandable as ‘Room’ itself, he thinks, because he doesn’t yet truly appreciate what went on in ‘Room’ and why he and Ma were there.

Although cast members other than Larson and Tremblay do eventually appear, this is nevertheless built entirely upon their characterisations, and both are quite brilliant in deeply challenging roles. You’d never doubt that they were mother and son, that Jack believes that ‘Room’ is the whole universe and so much of life happens by magic, and that Ma (or Joy) is quietly wracked with fear, guilt and a driving need to get the Hell out and enjoy room to move beyond ‘Room’.