An ‘astonishing’ Oscar-winning film has landed back on Netflix. In the psychological drama Room, Brie Larson is Joy, a young woman who is kidnapped, raped and held in captivity where she gives birth. Both mother and son are locked in a squalid shed that the boy, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), has never left. On the boy’s fifth birthday, she begins plotting their escape.
Room is based on a book by Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue who also wrote the film’s screenplay. Despite its dark subject matter, viewers and critics have praised the hope and love embedded in its extraordinary story. The role landed then-26-year-old Larson an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Five-year-old Jack’s whole life is contained in the room. His only exposure to the real world is through the shed’s skylight. The two are captives to man dubbed Old Nick, Jack’s biological father, who abducted Joy seven years earlier when she was just 19 years old.
Joy is a devoted mother to her son. Known to Jack as just ‘Ma’, she strives to create a fulfilling life for him in the small 10-by-10 foot space in which they are detained.
To protect him from the horrors of their situation, she tells Jack that only the two of them and Old Nick are real. Joy keeps her Jack occupied with toys, books and the small television they are alotted. What he reads in books and watches on TV, she tells him, is not real.
Room received four nominations at the Academy Awards including for Best Picture, including the Best Actress category Larson won.
On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 93% score from both critics and general audience members. The website measures the number of positive and negative reviews, of which there were 318 professional reviews of Room and over 50,000 viewer ratings.
What critics thought
As per The Times UK, Room is a “soul-stirring feel-good weepie”. Max Weiss echoed the sentiment: “Room can be, at times, an almost unbearably emotional experience, but that’s a good thing. It feels good to feel so much at the movies.”
“There’s no denying that Room starts from a dark place, but that does not necessarily make it a bleak film,” said film critic Stephen Romei.
“Room is a lithe, deeply moving wonder that builds to a miraculous coda,” exalted Sara Michelle Fetters.
What viewers thought
“A non-traditional thriller with another brilliant turn from Brie Larson but an even better one from Jacob Tremblay,” said one IMDb user as another noted: “Incredibly real & disturbing. A bit slow though.”
On Rotten Tomatoes, one viewer gave the film a perfect score, explaining: “Though deeply harrowing, the story’s centering on the utterly authentic mother-son relationship of Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, elevates it to a profound and ultimately uplifting exploration of what humans can endure and survive in the face of the worst possible circumstances, and what makes survival and recovery possible.”
Amongst praise for Jacob Tremblay’s performance, fans have decried his Oscars snub. One reviewer on Letterboxd, the film social platform, wrote: “I don’t even know how it is possible for an eight year old kid to be this good at acting”
Another quipped: “I cried so much that I’m now dying from dehydration.”
Room is available to stream now on Netflix UK.