Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.5

The Room Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 22, 2024

Imagine being frozen in fear as you watch a freight train barrel down on you as you freely stand on the tracks, or as the timer on a bomb ticks away before your face, leaving you transfixed on the pending doom even with every opportunity to run away, and then crash! boom! you're struck, you explode, yet somehow still there to witness the carnage, and willingly so, that has befallen you, to soak in the grisly gore and ponder the aftermath of total destruction. That might be sort of like the willingness to enter into, the viewing of, and the later contemplation on The Room, one of the mot notoriously awful movies of all time, a film that beckons against all better judgment, proves absolutely destructive in its very essence, yet somehow strengthens the resolve to bask in its glow and in the messy aftermath. This is a film with a powerful, yet curious, draw, if only to see what all the fuss is about and watch another fuss unfold on the screen. It's a curious film, a weird film, a terrible film, but...it...just...draws. Who knows. Watch it for yourself and see.

For whatever a plot recap is worth, it goes something like this: Johnny (Tommy Wiseau, who also wrote, produced, and directed the film) is a well-off banker (I honestly don't remember the film saying that, so thanks Wikipedia) who lives with his longtime girlfriend-slash-fiancé Lisa (Juliette Danielle). The two seem perfectly content in their relationship: until they are not. Lisa randomly decides she loves Tommy's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero) instead, and the two begin a torrid affair, he being more reluctant to be with her than she is with him. Lisa tries to convince her mother (Carolyn Minnott) and her best friend (Robyn Paris) that breaking things off with Johnny will make her happy. Despite their objections, the affair continues behind Johnny's back. Soon, everyone but Johnny knows. If and when he finds out, how will he respond?

So, is it really as bad as it’s made out to be? Well, yes. While the plot is not incoherent – girl is tired of boy and cheats on him – it’s badly put together, from concept to execution, which includes dialogue, acting, photography, pacing, editing, everything. The film simply jumbles scenes together along that loose plot line. There are three lengthy sex scenes in the first 27 minutes, two involving Lisa and Johnny (which might even recycle footage; it’s hard to tell since they are so similar) and one involving Lisa and Mark. Wait, as I write this in my notes, there’s another! With chocolate! But between a couple of other people. Apart from the sex scenes, the film boils down to repeated conversations, on one side, about how Lisa no longer loves Johnny. Lisa almost exclusively talks with her friend or her mother, both of whom try to talk her out of the affair because Johnny is a good guy, financially stable, and all of that. But she will have none of it anymore. She wants to be happy. The other conversations center on Johnny, who is sure of himself and proclaiming Lisa’s undying love for him. So that is pretty much the movie until the final minutes when it all comes to a “climactic” end.

Then there are all the plot inconsistencies, abandoned story threads, and the like. The film does very little with Denny, for example, the young boy that Johnny wants to “adopt” and whom he supports through school. Other than Denny dropping in every now and then (it almost seems like there should have been a laugh track accompanying most of his scenes) and a random scene involving him and the money he owes to a drug dealer, he serves no purpose in the film, and neither do his scenes. There’s no try at emotional resonance with the bond he and Johnny supposedly share or how the breakup might impact him, other than a cursory few moments at the end. The matter of Lisa’s mother’s breast cancer is shrugged off with nary a concern, never to be mentioned again, or making any kind of difference to the plot. There are many other such scenes, and even characters, that seem like deleted concepts that errantly made their way into the final cut somehow. The acting is atrocious, too. Well, that’s not fair, everyone is at least somewhat competent, except for Wiseau, who seems like he landed the part off the street and plays his scenes with five minutes of prep time each, not the man who wrote the film in the first place and must have been intimately familiar with it. It’s an absolute mess of a movie, but curiously watchable.

The Room Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Room was shot with both digital and 35mm film cameras simultaneously. If they are intermixed together in the film cut I cannot say with confidence because the quality is rather poor regardless of the source. There are many problems, and most of them teeter on the side of "egregious." The opening title sequence reveals some judder and wobble as well as some spots and speckles, the former of which appears to settle, for the most part, beyond a few jarringly jittery shots, but the latter remains throughout. Banding is problematic in places, too, at times mildly, at times severely. Compression issues are obvious in spots and take a turn for the extreme in a few select shots, namely at the following timestamps 20:13, 31:19, 50:49, and 1:30:50. These are the direst examples, and they are so bad as to absolutely destroy the integrity of the shot. The image lacks any kind of authoritative detailing. It's flat, drab, and lacking any sort of crispness that one would expect to find with a good quality Blu-ray based on either a digital or film source. When it is clear that film is being shown, grain fluctuates from mild to overly dense and snowy. Colors are very flat and lifeless. Look at the 20:40 mark. The movie looks like it's 40 years old and faded here and in other spots as well. The red dress Lisa receives at the beginning lacks any sort of punch or even tonal nuance. Blacks look flat and faded at the 65-minute mark. Skin tones are unremarkable. This does not look good at all.

The Room Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately, Wiseau-Films delivers The Room to Blu-ray with a DVD quality Dolby Digital 5.1 lossy soundtrack. The absence of tighter fidelity and faithfulness is apparent from the opening musical elements. The music lacks that distinctive crispness and absolute fidelity lossless offers, but at least spacing is good. Music follows a similar pattern throughout. There are not many high-yield sound effects, and none stand apart, even during some of the more prominent examples in the film's final minutes. Dialogue is the main audio element here, and the presentation is adequate with center grounding and good prioritization but, like the music, a notable absence of the lifelike and authoritative presentation posture that lossless (and better sound capture) provides.

The Room Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of The Room contains a few extras that can be as bizarre as the movie itself. The main menu is of DVD standards (no seamless transition from one page to another) but it is made of full motion video on the main page (and static stills on others) with accompanying music and dialogue in film clips. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover. However, it does include an insert sheet listing the film's chapters on one side and an advertisement (with coupon code) for The Room merchandise on the other. There is also alternate artwork on the inside of the Blu-ray jacket.

• Short Trailer (480i, window box, 0:39).
• Long Trailer (480i, window box, 2:18).
• Interview with Eric Chase, Greg Sestero & TW (1080p, 5:58): The film's editor and sound mixer (Chase), its actor (Sestero), and Wiseau himself discuss everything from the film's success, playing football from three feet away, audience reaction, how the film helps to abate crime, shooting details (in both digital and 35mm film), Sestero's book, and more. The "praise" for the film appears nearly tongue-in-cheek, especially from Chase and Sestero.
• Interview with Tommy Wiseau (1080p, 9:06): Wiseau discusses the film's themes, the title, the possibility of a sequel, Lisa's character, the setting, the film's future legacy (which somehow begins with Wiseau discussing the film playing on Mars), what Wiseau might hypothetically change about the film, his consideration of whether he succeeded in making the film, and more. By the way, does the Wiseau Films logo make anyone else dizzy?
• Picture Gallery (1080p, 6:26): Stills from the set (and some promo material), set to music, These are auto advancing.
• Behind the Scenes (480i, 20:05): An in-depth look at the making of the movie, not through interviews but "fly on the wall" video access.
• Deleted Scenes (480i, window box 3:52 total runtime): A couple of scenes set in the same location, and more of "where's my money, Denny?" and basically an alternate take of a scene from the film around the 34-35-minute mark.

The Room Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Maybe the big question for a film like The Room, a film that even more than a decade after its Blu-ray release is selling for $25 at time of writing, is, is it worth the cost? Not just the financial cost, but also the emotional cost of investing in a known commodity that brings with it only gloom and despair or, if you're lucky, a hearty laugh response that might just make it worthwhile? Hard to say. Is this a cult classic with repeat replay value, or is it just a bad movie in the tradition of Manos: The Hands of Fate? It probably sits on the former end of the scale, and it fits there so well that one has to question if Wiseau just got lucky making a movie this bad, or if he's such a creative genius that he knew what he was doing all along? Either way he's definitely rolling with it now, and even if the film was not the success he imagined, it's still on the tip of every cinephile's tongue now more than a decade from its release. Most films can't say that. Sadly, the Blu-ray is atrocious. While the extras are OK, the video quality is borderline lousy and the lossy audio is not much better. Still, this is probably one of those films that every serious home library should have.