Breathing Room (2008)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Blistering performances.

14 strangers suddenly wake up and find themselves locked away in a room with no exit. They are apparently part of an elaborate game, where you must solve the riddles else you keel over and die. And all this on a budget probably even smaller than that of Cube...You can not help but compare. And the comparison does this movie no favours. Acting is nowhere as good, execution is comparatively poor and their is no excuse for the sound guy being on Prozac during the shoot. That said a couple of actors give good, if flawed performances: David Higlen as Harry, Michael McLafferty as Lee and Brad Culver as Six.The action moves at a pedestrian pace and the suspense is an illusion, that fleets away after a glimmer. Its not all bad, but really tiresome in the end and wouldn't want to repeat this experience. But well... at least it wasn't a Saw ripoff... so its not all bad.

It a terrible show. In the end i don't know what the show its all about. I know a dozen low budget film that can produce something better than this. I rather watch reruns of Barney & friends or teletubbies than be wasting my time figuring out this movie. The setting is poor and so was the acting. The collars on the actors necks look terribly cheapskate rather than some security locking devices which they are meant to be. There was this usual plot which i found it awfully similar to some movie and that's all. The rest is plain old boring stuff and very predictable. You can even guess who is the killer in the end. Even if you pay me money to watch this film again, i will rather not as its insulting to intelligence.

No question that it looks, sounds, and feels cheap. Still, the filmmakers managed to round up several halfway decent actors and I found that it held my interest in a way that most other bottom-of-the-barrel DTV horror does not. Unfortunately there wasn't much payoff; the ending was definitely a major letdown. (By contrast, the slightly more ambiguous ending of Cube was somehow much more satisfying.) But doesn't the fact that myself and so many people are complaining about the ending mean we were interested enough to care how it turned out? I sort of admire how the filmmakers did as well as they did with an almost nonexistent budget, but that's no excuse for a plot that turns out to be not much more than one giant red herring. Oh well, it's worth a look if you liked Cube and have nothing else to do.

Tonya (Ailsa Marshall) awakens inside a room with a collar around her neck, and thirteen other strangers with no answers. Why are they all there? It's soon revealed that they're all a part of a game - to stay alive. One of them is a killer, one is a pedophile, and one is a rapist. As the group begins to turn on one another, they also begin to die one-by-one...some by obvious hands, others when the lights go out. Who is really behind this game, and who will make it out alive? Dare I say it? For a low-budget film, I actually enjoyed it. It was amusing watching and guessing who would die, who would live, and how it would all end. It's like the card game Mafia...when the lights go out, someone is killed, and then everyone left alive suspects everyone else. It's a good film to watch when you have no other options, but it shouldn't be your #1 option.