Lenny Abrahamson's adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel Room, about abducted sexually abused Joy (Brie Larson) locked away in a garden shed with five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) who was born in that shed is a harrowing experience, and not always in a good way. We are stuck in the company of two actors only one of whom is adult for almost two hours, one of those hours in extreme close quarters. We see most of the film through the child's eyes, hear his voice on the soundtrack as he tries to describe his emotional state in naive--sometimes too naive--prose. On occasion Jack screams, a high piercing sound that Abrahamson no doubt picked for that very quality; the director should have also been more aware that a brief sampling of that sound would have been enough--anything more would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Abrahamson--presumably taking his cue from Donoghue's book--focuses less on the story's lurid aspects (it's based on the far more horrifying Fritzl case) and more on the couple's survival strategies, at least during the film's first half; the second half documents a vaguer and in some ways equally horrifying struggle, as Joy tries to shrug free from the shackles in her head. Abrahamson isn't as successful at realizing this half, understandably so; how do you suggest inner captivity in the outside world? Larson does her level best, is at her best when an interviewer tactlessly suggests that she should have done better for her child: the emotions flitting over her face as she processes the idea register onscreen with piercing withering clarity.
