How should I begin writing the synopsis for Lenny Abrahamson’s ROOM? Perhaps I should begin with saying how one very protective mother, in order to safeguard her son from the dangerous world, keeps him in a locked room where the only daylight that can be seen is through a tiny window in the ceiling. But that appears only in the first twenty minutes of the film. What happens afterwards turns out to be a psychological game where tension will grow with every scene until the moment when you start feeling you’re part of the story.…

ROOM begins with Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay). They talk about many things: discuss his birthday, how to bake a cake, birds, skylight, TV and how important it is to stay in the room. But then all of a sudden you hear a noise like someone entering something on an electronic pad and then the door opens. This is where we find out that a young woman has been kept hostage for the last seven years where she got pregnant from a maniac.

ROOM could have been truly a masterpiece, very imaginative, an intense movie if not for certain scenes you will feel were unnecessary. When the movie is about to end, it will keep taking us somewhere we should not have been. But that was up to the director who probably felt necessary to have something that could have been skipped easily. But if we remove those twenty minutes, then Abrahamson’s film can be considered one of the best shown during the Toronto International Film Festival with some impressive performances from both Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay.