An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
No spoilers! If you would like spoilers – check out the Spoiler post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at Room 203 based on the Japanese novel of the same name written by Nanami Kamon.
When two best friends (Francesca Xuereb and Viktoria Vinyarska) move into a new gothic style apartment one is plagued by nightmares while the other is targeted by a curse.
Is it Scary?
Room 203 starts off with some pretty creepy scenes but loses that tension early as it switches to focus on establishing the main characters. Unfortunately it spends more time with the friendship than the scares, that’s not always a bad thing but it does make the movie not as terrifying than it should be.
In the end you won’t leave the movie scared unless you like wearing jewelry that you find in random holes in new apartments.
Review:
Room 203 is okay. The strongest part of the movie is the friendship between Kim and Izzy and Francesca Xuereb (Kim) and Viktoria Vinyarska (Izzy) do a great job in the film portraying that. The other actors in the movie also do a pretty good job, Scott Gremillion as Ronan and Eric Wiegand as Ian both elevate the movie with their portrayals.
The dialogue started off pretty awful but gets way better as the movie goes. There is some pretty cringey dialogue with one of the girls calling the building ‘lit’, asking the other ‘do you concur?’, and saying ‘this is beyond.’
These phrases were pretty popular years ago and since all three are used within five minutes it felt like someone was trying to too hard to convince us that the main characters are young and ‘cool’. I was pretty worried the movie would continue to shove that dialogue down our throats but it went away immediately.
The story had a pretty good and logical premise to start with, cursed object starts infecting one friend the other has to save them but then the logic slowly goes off the rails. Luckily the other parts of the movie make up for all the questions you’ll have. Plus these scenes also happen pretty fast so you probably won’t think about them till after the movie is over.
Also the movie is dark, not dark like depressingly serious but dark like someone forgot to turn on the lights in the last third of the movie.
Overall I would only recommend Room 203 if you have nothing else to watch, you aren’t looking for a really scary movie, or if you watch it with your best friend so you can constantly ask them ‘would you do that for me?’
Cast IMDB