'Room 6'

When watching horror movies, you sometimes have to deal with sorts that are tricky to handle. You have straight-to-video flicks, the B-series, the slasher movies (some people enjoy them, I don't like 'em to much), the fake snuff films, the ones who don't really mean to be serious (nicknamed "zombie comedies", since the best part of them involves zombies in one way or another), the bullshit that was considered awesome decades ago and now frankly sucks... still, I watch all this (so you don't have to!) Why do I watch it all? Because mainstream also fails a lot, and sometimes, you hit a movie in the straight-to-video which, like Dead End, manages to be mighty decent. So you see, even amongst a pile of rubbish, you manage to find pearls from time to time. But the movie I bring to you today, sadly, is not a pearl. It's bunny droppings from 2006.

Room 6 is a complete flatline flick. One of the most boring things I've ever seen, and on horror I've seen plenty. Christine Taylor (you remember the blonde from Zoolander? Well I should've seen her resume before watching the movie. If I had known she was in fuckin' Friends, I could've guessed this was gonna suck bad) and Jerry O'Connell (let's see... Kangaroo Jack, Scream 2, Police Academy 5, Stand by Me... ah yes. His face is very familiar) star as two people involved in the same car crash. Their loved ones get taken into a hospital, but nobody wants to reveal to them where this hospital is. Because it is a Hellish pit where they are both going to be killed horribly. As if this wasn't enough, la Taylor (for flick purposes, Amy) is dead scared of hospitals ever since she was a little girl, due to a mysterious issue involving her father. And now, in order to get her boyfriend back, she needs to walk right into the worst of them all. The movie was directed by Michael Hurst, also responsible for such (master)pieces of shit as Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud and House of the Dead 2. He not only directed this, he also wrote the damned thing. Now, if you're still interested in watching this steamy pile of manure, I'll be doing SPOILERS up ahead. Go watch it, go vomit, and then come back to listen to me type similar complaints to yours.

First and foremost, why the fuck did I watch this in the first place? Well, read the intro... and also, keep in mind yours truly thinks hospitals are creepy as crow. Maybe I've played a level too many of Silent Hill, and maybe I've hated hospitals from the bottom of my gut ever since I've known of their existence. They're horrifying as is, without a horror plot. There has to be something to this, I thought. There has to be something you can like amongst it. Also, have you ever heard of free association? It's something you usually can't avoid doing. Room 6's title reminds me of Session 9 and I figure - maybe they're similar. This is the biggest mistake you can do when picking a movie... and after all these years, I made it. The title was enticing... although the cover was shit for the birds. The "demonic face" school of horror movie covers is older than me.

What upsets me the most is that hospitals have a good potential for horror, and it's always wrecked somehow. This time? Satanists and blond, big-boobed vampires. Two of the three horror movie things I hate the most. The third is last-minute thought of endings, and I'll get to that in a few paragraphs. This movie is of the kind I refer to as "flatlines". Nothing happens, and what happens, you saw coming. Seriously: midway through the movie, I was guessing every scene. All the nurses are hot? Lesbian vampires. It seems to be a constant since Bram Stoker's Dracula and one of the staples of every cheap, poorly thought-of horror movie. Woman afraid of hospitals because of an issue with her dad? Can you guess? She pulled the plug on him. Whoa, difficult! And wait, there's a twist: the guy who's trying to help her? He's in on it too! Damn, I didn't see that coming at all! Bullshit...

Effects are hideous. I've seen better stuff zapping through Buffy the Vampire Slayer last week! But that's not the problem, I mean, effects don't make a movie. It's how they treat them. People have a budget for a movie, right? They have a budget, they need to pay the actors, take care of sceneries, camera crew, directors, screenwriters, all that stuff. It's normal they can't afford medium quality effects. First rule of the horror movie: if you can't show it right, don't show a lot of it, audience will fill in the blanks. Some movies gain in showing their prime attraction. Movies like Jaws, or Alien: we came in to see it. We want good, close shots of it. But when you only have generic demons and monsters to show, it may be a good idea not to show it too close, because you'll be compromising the quality of the mystery. You ever see Angel? (and why on Earth do you?) That's how the effects on this kidney stone wannabe were! What am I looking at? A horror movie for little kids?

Alright. I even tried to see it from another perspective. For a straight-to-video, it's bad, but maybe... just maybe it was meant for a specific audience. Like the aforementioned Angel, that was meant for a specific audience... one I don't wanna meet, but specific all the same. Maybe this was actually aimed at little kids... or not. See, Tales from the Crypt was aimed at young audiences. And effects weren't half as bad as in this shit. 1989 to 2006... only proves my theory. Even in the little things that don't matter globally... we've got stupider on the past two decades.

And when you finally need to wrap up the ending... what the fuck? Twenty minutes from the ending, you have a paralyzed bloke and a blonde running from vampire nurses. Fifteen minutes from the ending, the same blonde and the not-so-paralyzed anymore guy are running for the hills. What the fuck? Wasn't he paralyzed? And she just walks inside the room and takes him away, no struggle, no obstacles? Want more? They walk out the hospital door, so what now? The hospital is still there, they're both out or so it seems... badabing, pre-death dream. You're granted a final scene of Amy dying in the car crash after saving her boyfriend from certain doom! I have seen this trick well done. This is not it: why does she die? About three minutes before she does, she's talking fine, she's saying she "passed the test" (I swear on my best pair of sneakers, the script is just... it's like everything else: stale, boring, predictable), she looks mildly affected but not fuckin' dying! Why is it every screenwriter who doesn't know how to wrap up a horror movie gives you the "dream" bullshit? They give ill name to those which actually do this sort of thing well!

If you wanna take a gander at it, by all means, download the piece of shit. But don't pay for it: not worth your dough. It belongs to that group of poorly though, poorly conceived, poorly scripted pieces of crow you have to find in all styles from time to time.