Room 6 Movie Review

How scary is Room 6? It's so freakin' scary they call it R66m 6! That's 60 percent sixes out of the whole title! That's a lot of six.

In the film, and I use "film" in the loosest possible way, Christine Taylor attempts to prevent her career from slipping further into irrelevance. The sad fact is that aside from films wherein she either plays a Brady or in which her husband (Ben Stiller) took pity on her and gave her a part, she's really going nowhere fast.

In the nicest way I can put it, Room 6 is a shameful yet unsuccessful ripoff of cult favorite Jacob's Ladder. Here, we have troubled Amy (Taylor), who has so many nightmares and visions of evil demons that it's a miracle she can function in the real world, much less work as an elementary school teacher. Eventually she and boyfriend Nick (Shane Brolly) are in a car wreck, and Nick is hauled off by a spooky ambulance, and no one knows where. She teams up with the guy (Jerry O'Connell) in the truck they hit, whose sister is similarly situated. They're promptly on the hunt to find out what happened, only every avenue is met with some creepy demon dude that jumps at Amy out of nowhere, growls something, then vanishes.

Here's the formula for the film, and I'm not kidding: We see Amy. Amy sees a normal scene. Suddenly someone turns into a gross-headed demon and yells at her. Amy shrieks! Amy sees a normal scene again. Repeat 90 times until the truth is revealed.

Room 6 is so repetitive in its gotcha fright tactics that it soon downgrades from mildly scary to silly to wholly absurd. Soon the only thing that's scary is the giant wrinkle over Taylor's nose. How could makeup not deal with that thing? They're on top of things when someone needs horns or a melted face or it's time for a lesbian blood orgy in the not-really-there hospital (not kidding), but Taylor can't get a little powder? Sheesh.

The acting is horrible from all fronts, but it's the script that sinks this film completely. There's no sense of plot, the action randomly jumps ahead when the movie requires it, and you'll figure out the ending after about half an hour. Or faster, if you can convince yourself to actually pay attention.

The DVD includes a commentary track and a making-of featurette.