The Black Room Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.0

The Black Room Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 30, 2017

It’s been a while since I’ve revisited Scream: 5-Film Set , but if the kids in that franchise didn’t delineate the following rule about horror flicks, they certainly should have: if there’s a locked room in the house you just got at a budget price, don’t open it. The Black Room doesn’t really offer much of anything new in the haunted house domain, but it at least has the good sense not to take itself at all seriously, adding a kind of campy subtext to its tale (and tail, frankly) of a devilish entity in a suburban home that is for all intents and purposes something of a horndog. The film in fact begins with this entity attempting to seduce a nubile young woman sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, and it’s indicative of this film’s free for all presentational style that the spirit “gets to second base” with the girl, something that director Rolfe Kanefsky offers with very little (as in nothing) left to the imagination. It’s a patently wacky moment, but it sets the film up as an entry with a sense of humor and that in and of itself may be enough to elevate it above other low rent horror offerings. Unfortunately, that cheeky attitude isn’t consistently maintained throughout the rest of the film, but The Black Room does what it can within the context of low budget, unambitious horror outings.

That fleeting if initially interesting sense of humor isn’t just limited to the sight of an invisible spirit copping a feel, for the opening sequence also provides a potty mouthed grandma (the young girl is her granddaughter) who isn’t above telling the spirit to “f off”. Unfortunately for grandma, dropping the f bomb isn’t enough to keep the spirit from making its appointed rounds, with the result being grandma sucked into the house’s mysterious cellar abode and the home’s bizarrely ancient looking furnace (the house itself is standard 90s era McMansion fare) exploding, supposedly mortally injuring the granddaughter.

The story then predictably segues to the house being offered fully furnished by an obviously duplicitous real estate agent. The buyers are young couple Paul (Lukas Hassel) and Jennifer (Natasha Henstridge), who are at least somewhat acquainted with the house’s mysterious past, as evidenced by the fact that Paul tells the real estate agent they want to get the furnace repaired. Paul and Jennifer are seemingly perfectly happy newlyweds, still fully enamored of each other and “inaugurating” their new purchase with a number of sexual dalliances. The entire film in fact is filled with a kind of salacious subtext that frequently sees pulchritudinous women enjoying the spiritual seductions the house’s devilish entity keeps offering.

When Jennifer’s goth sister Karen (Augie Duke) shows up, it would seem that Paul, already perhaps subliminally under the sway of whatever lives in the cloistered basement room, may make a pass for her. That of course ends up happening, but only after Paul in fact ventures into the room and is subsumed by the entity in one of the film’s gooier sequences. The whole sexual energy angle is at least detailed in this scene, though some other plot points are left at least partially undeveloped, including at least some of the history behind the demonic presence and the home’s previous elderly owner.

The more titillating aspects of The Black Room are probably the film’s most distinctive feature, for in other ways the story and Kanefsky’s presentational style stick to time honored genre traditions. There are a number of decent scare scenes, some of them including fair amounts of gore, including looks at folks “captured” by the room, who are being sucked dry (so to speak) of their libidos. There’s also a kind of funny and scary scene involving a repairman who has the bad luck to poke around areas of the basement where he really shouldn’t be looking.

There’s a gonzo proclivity to The Black Room that makes it generally engaging even when it’s resolutely predictable in its broader outlines, and there are some actually pretty decent special effects helping to buoy the proceedings. The cast seems to be in on the fact that the entire film is something of an inside joke, and there are a number of kind of smarmily humorous scenes where characters under the throes of possession get their rocks off (so to speak). The Black Room may not ultimately amount to much, but when a film at least has the grace to be self deprecating it allows the audience to cut it a bit of slack that might otherwise not be there.

The Black Room Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Black Room is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual and Cleopatra Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Red Epic Dragon as the camera of choice, and this has the typically sleek, sharp and generally well detailed look of this digital capture technology. Aside from some scenes set inside the titular room (which in fact ends up being swathed in red as much as in black) and a couple of other sequences like a Bacchanalian party, the palette is refreshingly free of overt grading, and looks natural and well suffused. Detail levels are generally quite high, though some CGI looks decidedly soft in comparison to the bulk of the presentation. (The film has what look to be some quite effective practical effects.) There are some recurrent issues with yellow splotchiness that show up, not necessarily only in darker moments, the one place where this transfer doesn't quite pass muster.

The Black Room Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

You would think that a Blu-ray label affiliated with a famous record organization would want to appeal to audiophiles, but so far every Cleopatra disc I've reviewed has offered only lossy audio, and that "tradition" continues with The Black Room's Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Surround activity is often quite good, especially in some of the over the top effects sequences, but with a pulsing (perhaps even throbbing, but I digress) demon as a focal element of the film, a lossless track could arguably have really upped the audio ante here considerably. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly, if with a certain lack of oomph in the lower registers, and there are no issues with damage or distortion. But Cleopatra needs to step up to the plate and start offering lossless audio on its Blu-ray releases, or they may find themselves dealing with something even more horrifying than the Devil: an angry home theater consumer.

The Black Room Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary features Director Rolfe Kanefsky along with Natasha Henstridge, Augie Duke and Producer Esther Goodstein. This can be found under the Audio Select menu.


• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p; 30:48)


• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1:18)


• Blooper Reel (1080p; 1:12)


• Trailers (1080p; 2:05)


• Storyboards (1080i)


• Slide Show (1080i)

The Black Room Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Black Room is just kind of unapologetically silly, and that in fact is one of its most charming attributes. The film doesn't shy away from some pretty provocative sexual content, something that may end up appealing to those who aren't especially fond of horror films in general. Cleopatra's technical presentation is generally fine in the video department, but the label needs to start providing lossless audio.