The Forbidden Room (2015)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Admirable film.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I see what Madden was going for--a kind of tribute to the old-school adventure films of the early 1900s, but whatever he had in mind is ultimately lost in interwoven excess of choppy editing that would make David Fincher blush. Every inch of the films is sliced to bits and stitched through various quotes and distorted images that bleed together from scene to scene. The production design is low budget though accurate for what the director is going for and the cinematography contains some lovely shots that feel like they belong in a movie 80 years ago, but the camera is shaky on a Greengrass level that--coupled with the fragmented editing--makes it hard to even look at the screen. It is as though the director set up everything to be vintage and then decided to film it like a 21st century spy thriller. The final straw is the music--a blaring array of organs and orchestras that teeter in and out of tone and are as choppy and unpleasant as the rest of the film. I don't understand how this could have been shown to people in it's current form nonetheless how it was shown to critics and met with applause--it has a certified fresh rating on RT and is in the top 100 of 2015. "The Forbidden Room" is like a big practical joke perpetrated by all of critical media to get interested film buffs to sit through the movie equivalent of pouring battery acid in your eyes while listening to a group of Chimpanzees screw.

This film is not entertainment. It is so strange, I find it psychotic. Nothing in it, or the multitude of sub-stories strung together from beginning to end, have meaning. No characters are likable, comprehensive or sane.I purchased this film based upon reviews as a "masterpiece". They lied.

About as far removed from a conventional narrative as possible, this highly experimental movie from Guy Maddin juggles a raft of plots with subjects as diverse as bathing habits, doppelganger theory, deep sea mysteries and a doctor whose obsession with bones interferes with his work. Even more bizarre than Maddin's rather random jumping between plots, however, is the visual style he brings to the project with black and white and tinted sequences, silent movie style title cards, deteriorating stock footage and the list goes on. The film has a found footage feel to it -- think Craig Baldwin's pseudo-documentaries and you will know what to expect -- however by providing no logic to the flipping in and out of stories, Maddin does not manage to spin an experimental movie half as enticing as Baldwin's seminal works. To call the film 'uneven' would be a massive understatement. At its best, 'The Forbidden Room' is laugh-out-loud funny - with Louis Negin offering a very funny take on 1950s basic hygiene movies - and memorable - with a catchy song about derrieres. These high points are very few and far between though and the majority of the movie is too convoluted to generate laughs with characters so paper thin that they are simply not interesting to follow around. With its uncanny visuals, daringness to be different and hilarious odd bits, 'The Forbidden Room' is not a film that should be dismissed altogether. It takes a lot of patience though to get through. There is reason why experiment movies usually are not as long as this effort is.

I did not enjoy this film. In fact after investing an hour trying to watch it, I had to give up. Some reviewers have used the terms "deep" and a "slog" to get through. Well it was deeper than I wanted to go, and slog is an understatement. I was not able to figure out a plot, it appeared to be a jumble of disconnected clips randomly strung together that made no sense. The harsh flickering high contrast filming style with it's strange pulsation graphic images in the background, was like watching something from the psychedelic 60's. The flickering was like watching a strobe light. The scenes were short and jumped from scene to scene like something from Sesame Street. If you are a fan of Pulp Fiction, you may be able to sit through this film long enough to figure it out. For me, it was an hour of my life I will never get back.