The Disappointments Room -- a review

Kate Beckinsale stars Dana Barrow, an architect who moves to the country with her husband and young son after suffering a grievous tragedy with her infant daughter. They move into a mansion that was formerly owned by a Judge Blacker (Gerald McRaney) back in the olden days. Dana discovers that her new home has a secret room, one where the door is only locked from the outside, making it a prison cell. Consulting with a local historian, Dana discovers that the room is what’s known as a disappointment room.

Back in the olden days, if a child was born with any form of disability that was not deemed to be “suitable” for their wealthy family, they would be hidden from society, locked away in the disappointment room. Dana discovers that Judge Blacker had done this to his young daughter, locking her away in the disappointment room in the upstairs of her new country home. But Judge Blacker’s daughter, along with the good judge himself, are not at rest, for they still wander the halls of the house even after death.

Or do they?

A major problem with The Disappointments Room is how the script keeps undercutting Beckinsale’s character. Just when you’re solidly in her corner, the screenplay (co-written by actor Wentworth Miller, from Prison Break, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow) keeps pulling the rug out from under her in terms of undermining her credibility. Instead of a scary supernatural thriller, we wind up with a lame Lifetime Network movie where we’re left always wondering about the sanity of the main character.

Another problem is that the film feels very choppy, as if a great deal of the scenes have been left on the cutting room floor. Characters abruptly disappear--such as with one having been killed, supposedly by the ghosts, only for his body to disappear later. But if he wasn’t really killed, then where is he? I really like Kate Beckinsale a great deal, and I saw this just because she was in it, but not even her presence could liven up this muddled mess of a film, which is so confused that the real mystery here is what kind of a story the filmmakers were going for in the first place. --SF

Comments

The Conjuring: Last Rites

Whether you believe in the “true” exploits of demonologists Ed & Lorraine Warren or not (I don’t), The Conjuring series of films, based on their “true” stories, have all been very entertaining, with everything now supposedly coming to an end with The Conjuring: Last Rites . After a prologue in 1964, where we witness the traumatic birth of the Warren’s daughter, Judy, the rest of the movie advances to 1986, with the Warrens now somewhat retired. They’re still speaking at colleges, before giggly students who crack Ghostbusters jokes at them, but the Warrens have ceased personally investigating creepy cases on their own. That is, until their good friend Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) winds up hanging from a noose, thanks to a demonic attack. Father Gordon had been trying to get the Warrens to investigate the case of the Smurls--a family in Pennsylvania who are suffering through a severe haunting in their house, and when the Warrens finally do get involved, the demons come...

The Housemaid

The Housemaid (from 2025—not to be confused with the 2010 film of the same name) is based on the first book in a psychological thriller series by author Freida McFadden. Sydney Sweeney stars as Millie Calloway. a young woman down on her luck who’s struggling after being released on parole from jail. While living in her car, Millie applies for a live-in maid position with a wealthy family, Nina (Amanda Seyfried) & Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) Winchester, and their young daughter, Cecelia (Indiana Elle) and—to her delight—she gets the job. But, of course, once Millie starts working her maid gig, that’s when the real horror show begins. Despite acting like she was in Millie’s corner in the beginning, Nina deliberately creates problems for Millie that make her look bad. It turns out that Nina is a whack-job who’s served time at a mental facility for trying to kill her own daughter when she was a baby, and now Nina’s got Millie in her sights. If The Housemaid sounds like some ...

Logan's Run -- a review

I first saw Logan’s Run in a New Jersey movie theater fifty years ago, when I was a boy. The theater, somewhere in the suburban wilds of the Garden State, was packed to the gills with people. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the movie back then—all I cared about that it was a brand new science fiction film, in an age when big budget SF properties on both TV and the big screen was very rare (of course, Star Wars , which would be released the very next year, would change all of that). Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan’s Run is a futuristic tale about a man named Logan 5 (Michael York) who has a special job in a place filled with hedonistic leisure. Logan lives within the splendor of a Utopian society whose population dwells within large domes. The interior is presented as a vast, upscale shopping mall where its citizens want for nothing. Every need, every whim, and every fantasy is met. Of course, there’s a catc...

The View From The Mountain

Search This Blog