The Killing Room – 2009 – who’ll die next?
The Killing Room is one of those movies I didn’t remember seeing. I’m often like that. I don’t remember. Maybe I’m getting senile but the number of times I forget if I’ve seen a movie or not just by the title are really plentiful. When I start watching them I of course know that I’ve seen it before but I have seen an excessive amount of movies in my time that I don’t remember any of the details anyway. What I usually remember is what I thought about it and the general “feel” of it. That is to say that I can remember if there’s a creepy feeling or a sadistic overall tone, but seldom which character snuffs it first if it’s that kind of movie.
The Killing Room is that kind of movie. Basically, there are four people in a room where an experiment is being conducted. It starts out like I would imagine any medical experiments would do. Pretty straightforward. There are questionnaires to fill in and the people in the room get acquainted with each other. Well, I guess a real experiment wouldn’t collect the testies in the same room. Especially nor nowadays when privacy and secrecy seem to be a lot more important to us.
The Analyst
We also have this newly employed analyst whose assignment is the assess the situation and draw conclusions from what has happened. Soon we realize that the tapes she’s ordered to watch of the first part of the experiment really get to her and that she’s drawn between “making the right thing” and freeing the subject from the room they’re locked in, or continue studying the results of the experiment and actually come to a conclusion. I kinda get the feeling that this is the actual test being conducted. To see if she can cope by watching these strangers suffer and that the apparent experiment is a fake.
The Killing Room lives up to its title. The room itself might not kill people but people do in fact die. And the experiment ruthlessly goes on. Someone is after the end result no matter the cost. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a film where people are trapped inside a room forced to obey some outside “big brother” speaking through a speaker telling them what to do. The Killing Room is a very clean and mysterious film. First of all, we don’t initially know what the experiment is all about. We get some info at the beginning of the film that it’s government-funded and very VERY secret. Of course it is. I think this brings fear into a lot of people, that their own government is willing to conduct lethal experiments on its own citizens for the “greater good”.
Peter Stormare
The Killing Room gradually gets more vicious and deadly. And you can tell that the people behind it have thought of every single scenario. This is something that has been carried out not dozens but hundreds of times before! It’s a very well-acted movie in my opinion both from the people inside the room who are getting more and more hysterical or remain calm throughout the ordeal. I think one of the main things that add to the terror is the character of Dr. Phillips though. He’s more or less outside the room and remains very cold and scientific. There are no people inside the room, they are just subjects in his mind. Dr. Phillips, if that’s really his name is portrayed by Swedish actor Peter Stormare and I don’t think anyone else could have done the part just like him. He’s a master at playing characters that you can’t really tell if they’re silently crazy or not.
I guess the final scenes are supposed to be a surprise or twist ending but at this point, I’m not very surprised by twist endings anymore. I usually see them coming from a mile away. There are times when filmmakers still fool me of course. But regardless, I enjoy them nevertheless. I think the Killing Room does it really well and succeeds to be really terrifying at times. Partly because of the creepy feeling and the well-conducted scenes but also because the plot is so close to reality that it actually could happen. Are you willing to take part in a medical experiment after seeing The Killing Room?
