Room introduces Joy (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) as a one parent family. They live in a small house, do their morning rituals and spend a lot of time with each other. But not everything is as it seems. Jack’s hair is extremely long, Joy doesn’t seem to take very good care of herself and the space they are living in seems awfully small. You start to wonder why they don’t go outside. When you then find out that these two people are being held in a small room, Joy was kidnapped as a teen and has been abused resulting in Jack, then you know that you are watching something which won’t be easy to sit through.
With its opening set in that claustrofobic room, you see how important Joy and Jack are for each other. Slowly you get to learn more about them and awful situation they find themselves in. This is Jack’s actual world, as he never seen anything else. Everything he sees on TV he thinks isn’t real and believes everything his mother tells him like any child would. When his mother tells him that she has a plan to escape, initially he’s frightened, because he don’t know what’s behind the door, but helps her. But what will happen if this plan works? How will they handle their freedom, the question society has for them and the challenges they will have to face?
Brie Larson managed to get an Oscar nomination for her role and it is odd this isn’t the case as well for Jacob Tremblay, who convinces you that he’s someone who has been living in a confined space since birth, has given everything in that room its own name and has trouble adjusting to change.
Room isn’t an easy movie to watch as it is very moving and especially during the first half the suspense is horryfying. It’s also a movie which makes you realize that the world is filled with possibilities, but that sometimes we limit ourselves too much in order to use them fully.
