Room 6 (aka R66m 6)
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: C- Film: C-
Why is it so hard to do a good, simple, effective Horror
film without getting silly, stupid, boring or seeming like too many works
before it? This even seems to happen
when a good idea surfaces, as with Mike Hurst’s Room 6, a potentially
good 2005 Horror Comedy about a young lady (Christine Taylor) who is afraid of
hospitals then has to deal with one when her boyfriend is injured in a car
crash. The problem is that the hospital
he is taken to does not exist, so what gives?
Not a good script, for certain. How could so many great opportunities be missed? This is not authentically funny, scary or
smart. It comes across as lazy, tired,
boring, bored and even Jerry O’Connell seems bored. Any mystery here is lame, while the MTV quick editing where
applicable is so bad, it cannot cover or distract from all the problems
here. Of course, to say any more would
ruin what little surprise is here, but the points where they creators think they
are being cleverly referential to other horror films screams (pun intended)
that they had no idea of what they had, were creatively bankrupt otherwise and
you are better off renting Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween II or The
Shining. What a miss!!!
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image does not have
the best definition, but with color and some depth a little better than usual,
it plays back without the annoying cliché of degrade overall image and gutted
color. Unfortunately, cinematographer
Raymond Stella comes up with nothing very memorable in the way of shots and a
bad work is made worse. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 mix has the usual Horror punchiness, but it is the same old tired,
clichéd kick. Extras include a DVD-ROM
printable screenplay (lucky us, but you can examine more closely all that went
wrong, at least), original trailer, featurette and audio commentary by
co-writers, one who produced. Even they
are tired.
- Nicholas Sheffo
