Split almost perfectly down its center, Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, based on the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue, is equal parts heart-stopping thriller and emotionally visceral drama. Few films are as effectively stomach-churning while sustaining emotional connectedness in so compelling a manner. This is what is possible when a novel is perfectly translated to screen and, like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl screenplay adaptation last year, holds up a keen argument for authors adapting their own work. A far cry from Abrahamson’s decidedly weirder film entry of last year, Frank, Room is an insular (literally) account of a young woman, Ma (Brie Larson, being amazing), doing her best to raise her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay, almost stealing the show) in the tiny one-room shack where they are held captive. Pushed to her breaking point and fearing for her son’s safety, Ma is finally driven to enact a harrowing plan to help her son escape and experience the world outside of “room.”

Abrahamson spends the film’s first act focused on the intricacies of life in a tiny room and the inventive and loving ways Ma has devised to keep her son healthy and happy. She cooks him meals on a hot plate, breastfeeds him for added sustenance, and leads him through yoga and running exercises around the room. Through expert use of Jack’s first person narrative scattered throughout the film, we see “room” through his five-year-old eyes. The toilet, the chairs, the television and the wardrobe he often sleeps in all take on distinct and special characteristics as they make up the entirety of Jack’s universe and everything he’s ever known. But most important of all is Ma, and the bond between mother and son is strong and almost feral.

In watching their lives it becomes clear that in the seven years Ma has spent in “room,” and the five that Jack has, a routine has developed. Each night Ma tucks Jack away into the wardrobe, doing her best to shelter him from her captor, Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), when he makes his nightly visit to Ma to take advantage of her. Jack knows the drill, but curiosity gets the better of him one night and he climbs out to have a look at the only other human being he’s ever seen. Ma awakes to find Nick talking to Jack and reacts with a fierce protectiveness. She pays the price and decides once and for all something must be done.

The plan for escape in the film is equal in anxiety to any great heist film, more so because it’s experienced mostly through Jack’s scared understanding of what he is doing. The entire plan rests on him to act, but more than that it relies on him accepting this new truth his mother is revealing to him that there is an entire universe outside of “room” and he needs to choose to leave everything he knows and loves, including his mother. There isn’t an audience alive that won’t be gripping their armrests as the escape scene plays out, and without revealing too much about how the film continues, suffice it to say that Ma and Jack face an entirely new set of demons once they are out in the real world.

The intimate nature of the narrative is what especially allows for the emotional connection one feels for Ma and Jack. They represent the fear everyone shares at being violated so profoundly by another human. One can’t help but imagine what they would attempt or feel in a similar situation. How can anyone prepare for such a thing? Equally so, how can we predict the physical and emotional effects and how they will manifest in the years following such trauma? Jack shows us the resilient nature of children in the way he begins to accept the new world he is experiencing, while Ma is haunted by the world she knew before her kidnapping and how it can never be the same. And both have to get used to a world full of judgment and expectation and an inability to truly understand their experience.

Obviously the film’s writing is what sets it up for success, but Larson and Tremblay’s performances are what elevate this film to perfection and sure-fire award candidacy. Larson manages to juggle portraying an abused woman, a fierce mother, and a PTSD-afflicted young woman who wasn’t allowed to complete her own childhood. Tremblay, and his perfect little lips, expresses the entire range of a five-year-old: wonder, excitement, stubbornness, fear, and child-like unadulterated love. His courage is astounding and the chemistry between Larson and himself is palpable.

There are a few unexplored story threads in the second half that leave us wanting, most especially between Ma and her father played by William H. Macy. And, of course, it’s difficult for there to be a truly satisfying stopping point to the film, as one becomes so attached and invested in the characters it’s natural to wish we could see how their entire lives play out. The film’s lens stays close on its subjects, contributing to the claustrophobic but intimate relationship of its lead characters. The cinematography is a wash of blue and green but manages not to be depressing with its drab scheme.

Room is certainly among the year’s essential viewing and while some may be quick to label it a “difficult watch,” such a description neglects the ultimately life-affirming and passionately affecting story told. Abrahamson has done an amazing job in inviting viewers to consider one of those potentialities no one likes to think about, engaging us with a deeply personal and fantastically told tale of survival and familial bond.

A tug of war between great drama and schmaltzy pap, Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room comes perilously close to collapsing into a laughably maudlin film at times. Spending its first half entirely in the titular room (in actuality a shed), Ma (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) are being held hostage by a man they call Old Nick (Sean Bridgers); Old Nick kidnapped Ma seven years ago and has been using her as his sex slave this entire time. Jack, unaware that Old Nick is his dad (kidnapped for seven years with a five-year-old son, you do the math), has no concept of the outside world, having lived his entire life in his mother’s prison. Eventually Ma, thinking Jack is old enough to face the truth about their situation, starts devising an escape plan.

Note: minor spoilers follow

Room thankfully doesn’t stay in its one location the entire time, instead dealing with the struggles of Ma and Jack once they escape captivity. Larson, Tremblay and Joan Allen (playing Larson’s mother) all do terrific work; Larson excels at going from tough and resilient to psychologically shattered, Tremblay is absolutely convincing as a child facing the world for the first time, and Allen is remarkable as she tries to deal with both her daughter’s return and becoming a grandmother. But every time Room’s cast comes together to create a great moment Abrahamson, who directed the insufferably quirky Frank last year, finds another moment to screw things up. Twee sequences where Jack narrates things from his perspective make the film suddenly turn into “The Littlest Hostage,” and the final sequence is laughably bad, with a scene that feels like watching a PTSD version of Goodnight Moon. It’s an uneven picture that could have been much better, and that makes Room all the more frustrating.

A vastly opposing turn from last year’s mostly light and decidedly oddball Frank, Lenny Abrahamson’s next film—which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Program—looks to be a heartstring tightener. Room stars Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son trapped within the confines of a 10ft x 10 ft one-room shed. Based on the book by Emma Donoghue, Larson plays Ma, a young woman determined not to let the smallness of the universe she and her son Jack (Tremblay) occupy limit his growth and world experience.

As evidenced by the teaser, Ma and Jack make a daring escape and young Jack faces the shocking reality that there is a world beyond the four walls he’s only ever known. Also starring William H. Macy and Joan Allen the film looks like it should elicit some serious emotion.

The film releases limitedly on October 16th and nationwide November 6th.

When A-listers assemble for a film that hardly seems viable on paper let alone delivering anything of worth on-screen, one has to wonder what the inside joke is. The paycheck couldn’t have been that enticing for an indie drama-comedy and with a first time director, Anna Mastro, and a cloying script adapted from a first-time short by Paul Shoulberg, there was certainly no real muscle enticing the likes of William H. Macy, Virginia Madsen, and sleeper-celebs Neve Campbell and Peter Facinelli. So while the actual logistics around a production of this sort elude me, the evidence of Walter’s thinly-lined plot, actively unfunny premise, and reaching sentimentality are abundant.

Walter is the tale of Walter (spoiler alert), an uptight young man (Andrew J. West) who lives an organized and calculated life as indicated by the three alarms he uses to wake up in the morning, his eyes popping open before they even begin to chime. His robot—I mean mother (Virginia Madsen)—leaves his freshly pressed shirt for him next to his door every morning and cooks him eggs for every meal, constantly bemoaning the dangers of starvation. As for his father, well, Walter is the son of God. Not THE son of God, that beardy one, just another son of God. And as such, Walter has been gifted with the ability to judge. (An ability I’d heretofore thought everyone possessed.) Walter’s judgements are simple: “heaven” or “hell.”

To supply him with a steady stream of people to judge, Walter works in the local multiplex tearing tickets. Joined by douche-bag Vince (Milo Ventimiglia), who pokes fun of Walter’s slightly Asperger-ish ways, and the beautiful—and clearly heaven-bound—Kendall (Leven Rambin) who works in concessions. Jim Gaffigan is sorely underutilized as their always-annoyed manager Corey. Not only does Walter busy himself tearing tickets and muttering eternal condemnation on his unsuspecting patrons, but he’s also the shy-movie-lover type, spending his breaks inside the theaters watching whatever is on. This particular trait leads to many a movie-reel style flashback wherein we learn Walter’s father (Peter Facinelli) died when he was young. A sad, broken, father-less introvert who lives a controlled life to the point of deciding the after-life fate of every stranger he sees sounds like the most open and close psych case out there.

And indeed, Walter does eventually find himself a therapist (William H. Macy) when his organized life is put into tail-spin by the appearance of someone new. Greg the Ghost (Justin Kirk). Not quite as friendly as Casper, but at least not decomposing, and stuck in a sort of limbo awaiting judgement for the past ten years. How he knows to track down Walter the Judger we don’t know, but Walter is none too pleased to be asked to pass judgement on someone already dead. Apparently his gift only works on the living. Greg won’t take no for an answer and as he drags Walter around showing him the life he left behind, strange connections to Walter’s own life start to become transparent.

From there the film quickly dissolves into a goopy mess, abandoning its comedic sensibilities altogether and attempting to insert heightened emotion with some long-winded dramatically-tense scenes between Walter and his mother, and Walter and his therapist. Unfortunately Walter is entirely too stiff to care much for by this point and his revelations align in cookie cutter patterns that are entirely too convenient. Everyone responds appropriately, right down to dream-girl-Kendall being open to all-new-Walter in that way that only scripted dream-girls can be.

Walter wishes it were quirky, a word I’ve come to despise and lesser indies seem to aspire to. But if “weird” is what Walter is going for, it doesn’t even reach that. Mostly it’s a strange concept, that actually falls into totally plausible categories and develops exactly the way you’d think. It’s unbalanced in its intent, failing to push hard enough with its comedy and pushing too hard with its drama. As a simple look into the world of a young man on the cusp—I’m not joking, they even use the same “Hero” song we’ve all grown to associate with Boyhood during one scene—it’s simply not moving, nor enlightening. If they’d thrown God into the mix, or even provided any sort of explanation for Walter’s gift and how it works, than the actual “weirdness” of the film might have been interesting, but alas these areas go entirely undeveloped.

Macy and Madsen are always on their game, but this game is about as fun to watch as solitaire. West (his most recent memorable role being leader of a cannibalistic tribe on The Walking Dead) is straight with his awkward and emotionally stunted character to the point of detachment, but I won’t place the blame entirely on his shoulders. It’s often the case when a short film is translated to feature-length that the filler ends up being more of what already existed, which only makes for too much of what was previously just enough. Walter is a stretched out short with some A-list talent but not enough sense to hold it afloat. Perhaps its time for indie comedies to stop aspiring to “quirky” and start aspiring to well-developed and less gimmicky.

Walter gets a limited theatrical release Friday, March 13.

Anyone interested how the acting categories may pan out for the Oscars had their attention on the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards tonight, as this award show is much more reliable than say the Golden Globes, though there were a lot of overlap winners in the film categories. In fact, Patricia Arquette (Boyhood), J.K. Simmons (Whiplash), Julianne Moore (Still Alice) and Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) all repeated their wins in respected categorizes from the Globes two weeks ago. Redmayne continues his streak of edging out Michael Keaton (Birdman) who many consider to be the front-runner. This win might just shake things up for the category come Oscar night. Though Birdman wasn’t completely shut out, the film picked up the Outstanding Performance by a Cast award.

Orange Is the New Black picked up two awards on the television side of the awards, one for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series and Uzo Aduba (for the role of Crazy Eyes) won for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series. Kevin Spacey was the only Golden Globes repeat winner this year, earning Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series in both awards shows. Other winners included Mark Ruffalo (The Normal Heart), Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge) and Viola Davis (How To Get Away With Murder).

List of 2015 Screen Actors Guild Award Winners

Film

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
Julianne Moore – Still Alice

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
J.K. Simmons – Whiplash

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Patricia Arquette – Boyhood

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Birdman

Television

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
Mark Ruffalo – The Normal Heart

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
Frances McDormand – Olive Kitteridge

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
Kevin Spacey – House of Cards

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
Viola Davis – How To Get Away With Murder

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
William H. Macy – Shameless

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
Uzo Aduba – Orange Is the New Black

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
Downton Abbey

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
Orange Is the New Black