Troubled young schoolteacher Amy Roberts (a sound and sympathetic performance by the lovely Christine Taylor) and her nice fiancé Nick (likable Shane Bolly) get into a car accident. Nick gets whisked away to a nearby hospital. Amy tries to find Nick to no avail. Assisted by the friendly Lucas Dylan (an appealing turn by Jerry O'Connell), Amy discovers that Nick was taken to a mysterious hospital called St. Rosemary's that burned down a long time ago. Can Amy and Lucas save Nick from this hellish place? Director/co-writer Mike Hurst relates the compellingly vague and spooky premise at a deliberate pace and does an expert job of gradually building a genuinely eerie, unsettling and disorienting atmosphere which becomes more increasingly freaky and nightmarish as the narrative progresses towards its nerve-jangling conclusion. The fine acting from a capable cast helps a lot: Taylor and Bolly make for engaging leads, O'Connell does well in a change-of-pace straight role, plus there's excellent support from Chloe Moretz as helpful little girl Melissa Newman, Mary Pat Gleason as the stern, fearsome Nurse Holiday, Ellie Cornell as Melissa's scruffy white trash mother Sarah, Kane Hodder as a nasty, menacing homeless guy, Lisa Ann Walter as the mean, sarcastic Sergeant Burch, and Marshall Bell as Amy's sickly dad. Raymond Stella's slick, shadowy cinematography, Joe Kraemer's shivery score, and the clammy, claustrophobic hospital setting all further enhance the flesh-crawling weirded-out mood. Moreover, the resolution at the very end is surprisingly poignant. A pleasingly creepy fright feature.
Review of Room 6
