User reviews

Long shelved (filmed in 2014, unreleased until 2016) this cannot decide if it wants to be a haunted house flick, a psychological thriller, family drama, or a routine slasher movie, as a couple, still reeling from the death of their infant daughter, relocate, with their young son, to a remote mansion, for unexplained reasons.

Weird things begin happening immediately, but the film implies it may all be in wifey's mind. The discovery of a hidden room, and a black dog prowling the grounds takes the plot into generic possession/ haunting territory, but dead daughter subplot takes it into tragedy/ family drama territory. We are introduced to who I believe was intended to be the token psychic woman, who disappeared as quickly as she appeared, which lead me to wonder why she was even there. Twice the film tried to bring a third party/ love interest into the plot, before dropping one completely, and killing the other, without anything further being mentioned about him.

This entire film is like that, with seemingly only the beginning of its plot threads being explored, then dropped entirely. The film never climaxes, so much as it just stops, with nothing remotely close to closure to any of its numerous plot threads.

Well acted, and there is enough atmosphere in the Gothic home, but whole chunks of the plot seem to have been edited out prior to release, giving the film an unsatisfactory, unfinished feel.

Its movies like this that make you realize that sometimes, you can judge a movie by its title

Oh yeah, we know the type. September and January releases are generally known as movie dump months, after a busy period of cinema releases. A lot of the films released in this time period are films studios just needed to stick in to release. Generally these films are not good. The Disappointments Room does not go against the mold. After I watched the film I was kind of hoping I didn't as it pretty much offered nothing worthwhile during its entire duration.

The film is about a mother (played by the lovely Kate Beckinsale), her son and husband who move into a house where creepy occurrences take hold. She soon discovers a "disappointments room" in the attic where children with special needs or deformities were locked up. The spirits of the past start haunting her and she has a hard time separating reality from this new world she unlocked. Its a typical horror premise. Can I even call this horror? There isn't one scare in the film. Nothing that will stay with you. There aren't even any jump scares. In this day and age you'd expect something startling from a horror film but nothing really ever comes. As the film progresses you want to stomach less and less of it. If you've seen as many horror films as I have, you want something original, ambitious, or frighteningly entertaining. Unfortunately, this rarely happens.

I love Kate Beckinsale. She's an ageless beauty who I love watching on screen. I'd say she's the only reason you'd want to check this film out. She needs to pick better stuff for herself. She's been in some bad stuff but shes just wasted here. The guy who played her husband seemed like a caricature, his line delivery seemed so forced. He was basically the prototypical husband who doesn't see whats going on. Lucas Till was an entirely useless and creepy in the wrong kind of way character. I don't like the idea for the film but there could have been better delivery. Wish-washy editing of a bunch of "scary" images jumbled together is not enough to be memorable.

I know its my fault for getting sucked into this (damn you sexy Kate Beckinsale!) but as an avid film lover I'm always willing to give everything a chance in search of finding an inspired work. There's no inspiration here. Just a tired picture filled with nothing essential. You'll find scarier things in your day to day life than this mediocre effort. Skip it. There's too many puns I can do with the title of this film to convey how bad it is but I'll save you all the torture.

4/10

"The Disappointments Room" follows an architect (Kate Beckinsale) reeling from a family tragedy who moves into a remote mansion in upstate New York with her husband and young son to restore it. She uncovers a hidden room in the house that does not appear on the floor plans, and begins experiencing increasingly disorienting visions of the home's original owners.

I have to admit that I was fairly excited by the trailers for this film; it promised nothing groundbreaking, but appeared by all accounts to be an at least entertaining Gothic throwback—and I'd assume the script would lead one to a similar assumption, but the film unfortunately is something of a self-sabotaging effort.

It starts out briskly and glides through the typical haunted house fare—family arrives at old mansion, wife notices strange things immediately off the bat; she may be unstable, or the husband may be oblivious; the child is in imminent danger. These tropes are thrown at the audience in succession throughout the first act of the film; enter the second half, and the film seems to turn on its head. The plot regarding the history of the secret room and the apparent spirits in the house is sidelined, and suddenly the film becomes an anemic psychological study of a broken woman. The intrigue—or at least what little there was of it—for all purposes disappears.

The last forty minutes of the film especially are marked by awkward, amateurish editing choices that break any sense of flow, and a frankly ho-hum performance from Beckinsale. This isn't to say she's a bad actress, but she certainly seems bored here. The husband character is essentially useless in the film, and Lucas Till comes in as a sexualized handyman in the last thirty minutes, far too late to introduce a character that is apparently supposed to have some significance to the plot. By the end of the film, I was wondering where the narrative was attempting to take me—through the journey of a traumatized woman? Through a family that's falling apart? Through a haunted house? I still don't quite know, as the film fails to commit to any of the above in a genuine way. The last scene ties things together in a neat package, but there is no sense of relief or catharsis.

Overall, "The Disappointments Room" was a letdown (yes, I'm going to avoid the pun). In spite of the wonky editing, bad pacing, and general lack of narrative direction, the worst part of it all was that I honestly feel there is a good film somewhere in here; not an innovative one, or even a great one, but at least a good one— one that is capable of delivering a straightforward Gothic horror story without imploding on itself. One of the few things the film gets right is the atmosphere, and its most noteworthy scene comes at the end in the form of a disturbing Victorian-era flashback. Aside from that, "The Disappointments Room" is a lost opportunity. 4/10.

See if this synopsis sounds familiar: Dana and David Barrow have moved with their son Lucas to a house on the countryside to re-start their lives. Dana, who is an architect, is looking forward to redecorate their new living, but before long, something feel amiss. She seems to be seeing ghosts in the house, which initially is quickly dismissed as her having violent hallucinations from a recent loss, but then she discovers that the house has a sordid history, one that may come and haunt her and her family.

Everyone who has ever seen movies with haunted houses or families struggling with grief can see that they put The Woman in Black, The Sixth Sense, The Grudge, Antichrist, Poltergeist and The Orphanage into a blender for this film. One scene in particular with a boy and a creepy girl in a hallway seems directly lifted from the mother of all haunted house movies, The Shining. Now that could be seen as a respectful homage, but where some filmmakers like J.J. Abrams can combine elements from other movies into something exciting that at least feels fresh, the makers of this jumbled mess of clichés from better movies only produced a bland concoction with a bad aftertaste.

This cannot be pinned on one faulty element in particular, as the lazy script by D.J. Caruso and Wenthworth MIller, Caruso's uninspired direction and the extremely messy editing all carry a big part of the blame for why this movie feels so disjointed and meaningless. It is no secret that big chunks of the movie were edited out (explaining a meager running time of 91 minutes), and it shows. The story sets up several plot points that are simply abandoned later in the movie: for example, there is a subplot featuring a boy, a cat and a big dog that is solely used for cheap shocks and manipulated emotion, because it plays no role in the resolution of the story whatsoever.

All that happens seems to be in service of predictable scenes that aren't tense or suspenseful, since they lack a steady hand in direction, and everything can be seen coming from miles away. It all culminates in a ridiculous dinner scene that should have been the pay-off from previously established emotions and storylines, but since so much information and character development seems missing, it fails miserably. And it is topped only by a 'finale' that is so laughably weak, abrupt and unsatisfying that it gives new meaning to the term 'anti-climax'. As if writers and director couldn't come up with a good ending, so they didn't bother to write one, and just skipped to the end credits.

Kate Beckinsale is at the center of the story, and at least she does a decent effort to keep the viewers interested, something which can't be said of Mel Raido as David, whose wooden performance almost resembles an alien trying to do an impression of a human. Lucas Till's only reason for being here seems to create unease, and he also disappears from the story before he can do something meaningful. If there is some praise, it goes to the photography and the music, which both give the movie some edge over other B-horror movies.

Really a missed opportunity for D.J. Caruso, who has shown with Taking Lives and Disturbia that he could make a suspenseful movie.

The Disappointments Room is a disappoi...

See what I did there? I delivered the exact line you expected only I half-a**ed it. That in a nutshell is The Disappointments Room; it sets itself up to deliver nothing but the bare minimum and then doesn't even deliver on that. I automatically assumed this film was less than a blip on the radar. A small budget, small minded, small expectation snoozefest comparable to this year's The Other Side of the Door (2016). So imagine my surprise when the credits revealed the movie was directed by D.J. Caruso, the same guy who made Disturbia (2007). What the heck man? What the actual heck?

The plot, for what it's worth, concerns itself with a small family of New Yorkers who have moved to the American South to renovate an old antebellum mansion. While touring the grounds Dana (Beckinsale) our intrepid architect, notices a part of the house that's not in the actual blueprints. She prods further, locating the key to the room and deciding what the hay; let's open it up. What she doesn't know is the room also hides secrets that may anger the mansion's ghostly inhabitants and test the limits of her sanity.

The film strains mightily to fit every basic haunted house cliché. They include but are not limited to: ghosts standing behind their victims, toys magically appearing, elaborate apparition flashback mode and pets prematurely meeting their demise. Those clichés are then complimented with the sloppiest of editing and laziest of jump scares providing a movie completely lacking atmosphere. What's worse is this faded out dollhouse of a movie comes complete with a boring assemblage of shallow traits and neuroses masquerading as characters, which are thrown about with little regard for perspective, personality or motivation.

The most laughable of these paltry characters is Kate Beckinsale as Dana, whose lip-quivering mother in emotional recovery rings egregiously false. She saunters through scenes looking perturbed and has her share of bad dreams which is to be expected. Yet when the film reveals possible psychosis and carelessly lumbers towards a splashy confrontation, it's clear Beckinsale is drowning in a cesspool of offensively bad schizophrenia tropes.

This movie was not fun to watch...no surprise there. But it's also no fun to review. There's nothing resembling the ponderous hubris of Warner Bros's DCEU or the desperate "love me, please" attitude of Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). There's no hilariously bad reasoning like in God's Not Dead 2 (2016) or drive-by bellicose like in 13 Hours (2016). The Disappointments Room is the movie equivalent of flat skunk beer. Any processes that were once teaming with life are now dead and baking in the sun, making your patio smell like cat p***.

Nothing happens in this film. There are no consequences to sift through, no conclusions to be drawn, no lessons to be learned. If the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference, than the fact that I left this movie feeling nothing should be a testament to just how bad this thing is.

The Disappointments Room.

Do you know where that room is? It was my living room while watching this horrible excuse of a movie.

What the heck was the movie about at all?

And I knew it before. As you probably are just as big horror fans as I am, you know the golden rule: when there is a famous Hollywood actor / actress in it, the movie is bad. Really, really bad.

But I adore Kate Beckinsale (even though blonde is NOT a good hair colour for her...), so I wanted to give it a shot. And hey, there CAN be pleasant surprises when it comes to horror flicks with stars in it. Deliver Us From Evil, Mirrors, The Veil (but not for Alba, for T.Jane only!). It CAN work, so I was full of hope.

I shouldn't have been.

The movie is completely boring, from start to end. There is no "horror" in it. I mean, literally. The only scenes, that are supposed to be creepy, are flashbacks, nothing more. No jumpscares, no gore, no suspense, just plain nothing.

If Kate at least would have undressed, but nooooo, not even that.

The plot is confusing and has no start and no end - I heard important scenes got cut out of the movie (read the review of the extra from the movie's set), but even with all of them included it would still be a horrible movie.

Kate Beckinsale obviously did not receive enough money to bring in some effort, and the Frank Grillo clone could not catch that up for her.

The quality of course was good, perfect camera, light, sound, there was nothing left to be desired. But you can bet Kate Beckinsale does not work with people not knowing their technical jobs on set.

This must have been some contract work for Beckinsale, I cannot see why she participated in this mess of a movie. Or maybe she cannot get any more roles these days, since the success of "Underworld" lies far back in the past, and she does not get younger, I don't know. Whatever, just like me, she should have avoided this movie.

I could not even tell, what the movie really, really was about. Sure, there was this room where the rich people hid their ugly kids, fair enough. But why some - what? Ghosts? - haunt her now, and ONLY her but nobody else, I have no idea. What was it about that dude helping doing the repairs? Is he dead, or what? Was he real at all? He has to be, since her hubbie has seen him, right? And all those multiple scenes, where you see all actors in different roles? WTF?

As the title says: the movie is a complete and utter mess. It has no clear target to achieve, no character development at all, and more holes than plot.

The golden rule just got confirmed again. Avoid horror movies with big names in it. Give 20.000 bucks to some talented amateurs, and you will get way more entertaining horror flicks.

Put Beckinsale back in this black leather catsuit or let her play some RomCom, this is her only range as actress.

Please.

No More.

I had high hopes for the first half of this movie, but it just falls into a jumble in the last half. So many unanswered questions; a random kite, a random carpenter,etc..

If you want to see a classic with a similar story line, but done much, much better, check out The Changeling, bone chilling Canadian movie from 1980 with George C Scott. Don't be fooled by it's age, it's scary. You can even see it on youtube for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVttK509_JI .....it's basically everything this movie is trying to be except....you know, it makes sense.

As a big horror fan,poor reviews do not scare me especially when it comes to ghost stories in big houses. I found this a fine chiller for adults with at least two truly unsettling scenes but all around a well done effort,especially if you've slogged through many lesser direct to video releases. Any parent who's struggled with finding domestic happiness and/or the a child's death with understand Dana,a convincing performance by Kate Beckinsale. Her struggles makes up the half the story,the other going to the spirits haunting the mansion which highlight some rather cruel parenting from days of yesteryear. Gerald McRaney is a foreboding spectre. Perhaps the title could've been better for this film

Huge fan of Kate so I was excited to see this. But now I'm so disappointed I'm writing a review while only 25 mins in. Super boring.

For me the movie seems to suffer mostly from it trying to be two things without being really good at being one thing.

I went into the movie expecting a ghost story. What I ended up seeing is this some sort of psychological thriller staring Kate Beckinsale. She plays a architect who moves into a new house in the country with her family in order to get over the lost of a child, when she discovers a previous owner also lost their child on the same day and are hunting the room that they kept this child, who was a deformed girl born to a well to do family that wanted to keep their shame under wraps.

Kate Beckinsale does a really good job at playing a woman distressed over loosing a child. Most movies don't usually show this part of the break down, as her character develops a drinking habit, starts looking at her husband differently, to the point that a new man has a chance to interfere with the relationship, and she's becoming distance from the child she still has, in most movies this happens before that family moves into the house, but hear it actual seems to be happening during.

What takes away from this performance is the uneven dual plots with the ghost of their new home hunting Beckinsale's character, driving her crazy by putting ideas into her head about her feelings towards her dead child.

Having two movies in one can sometimes work (Like it did in From Dust Still Dawn), but here I feel the filmmakers never were quite sure about what they wanted the movie to be, which really effected it poorly.

Dana (Kate Beckinsale) is married to her husband Mel and the two have a young son. The film begins with the family arriving at an old mansion they have just purchased. The goal is to clean it up and do some work on the new home as Dana is some type of architect. Of course, like most horror films, things turn much worse as Dana (Kate Beckinsale) discovers an attic which has a horrible dark secret and a mysterious past. Dana also begins to be attacked with many dark visions and nightmares.

I personally don't mind a thriller/horror film. Like most people, I enjoy a horror movie that has Reason and Purpose. After a thriller I like to feel that I got something (even something minor) for watching the film and surviving the full duration of a scary film. After watching 1h 25min and seeing the final credits roll down my tv screen, I blinked... and blinked again. I couldn't work out what had just happened... and what on earth I had just witnessed.

The Disappointments Room, sadly, is one horrible, road kill of a film. The film's plots makes no sense, and has no Purpose or Reward as the finale is presented. Our characters in this are all weak and flat, and for the film's runtime they are a bunch of characters whose relationships don't match up and are completely unbelievable. As far as pacing goes, many of the scenes are edited poorly and are the result of a film that feels like more a group of short movies. Every 5mins felt like a new short movie was starting and finishing and never continued on correctly. At no point does this film have proper story that actually worked. I'll throw some small credit at the filming side of things. Shots are all nice and steady but that's about all I can say...

I found myself asking questions (as you do throughout a horror movie), hoping to get answers by the end of a film. Is that a ghost, is what I just saw supposed to be real to that character, how did that person die... Well, you can be curious all you want... because you will never know. This is also a rare horror movie that has a start and an ending that feels well... exactly the same no matter how you watch it, because this film is empty. If I was to explain what happens in this film with a group of friends during a dinner, it's done and dusted within 2 mins max, not 1hr 25mins. As you can tell I'm disapp... actually; I mean 'guttered' by this film. Kate Beckinsale is an actress I will defend and say "I know she can act" and I'm sure there is more to know as to how this film was made, approved, and pushed into cinemas around the world. Plus, I thought Kate Beckinsale was a babe when I was younger (no judgement, I just had to find something positive to say somewhere in the review)

1.3/10 Walkden Entertainment

When naming your film I would not use and adjective like poor, bad or say disappointment because unless it is really good can come back to bite you. This film uses Disappointments Room and it was very disappointing. I thought it may be interesting, but boy I was completely wrong. Just very poor pacing and editing in this thing. There were times multiple things were happening and I had no idea what was going on. The father was making dinner with two guests while the wife was looking at the hired hand doing something and then this and that happened and I was wondering what the point of this and that was. It was an okay concept and could have worked, but the execution could not have been any more horrid, who the heck do they have writing the scripts to these things? I will say that the film at least looked good and though it was not by a major studio the film at least looked like it was a big Hollywood studio film.

The story has an architect and her husband and son moving into a house that is in pretty rough shape. A very big house, because everyone in real life finds the most broken down looking house they can to move into even though banks kind of frown upon that as do inspectors. Well, the architect has something on her mind as something very predictable has occurred and now strange things are happening in her new house and she soon discovers a strange room not in the blueprints and immediately finds a key and gets told what it is with almost no build up. Soon she is visited by a handyman who seems to serve absolutely no purpose in the film and thankfully the film is over really quickly.

The film just has so many problems. The story is atrocious, how do you make a movie about a room and then make the discovery and getting into the room so anticlimactic? I was expecting the film to progress to an ending that had the main character finally getting into the room to discover a horror like no other. Another problem is the annoying son and father and the pointless handyman that kept flirting and in the end served no purpose. Neither did the one old lady at the library, there is literally a junction where she is looking at old clippings about ghost killing people and then trying to call the architect, but then poof, she is gone too.

This film is a horror film that features ghosts, a haunted house and no payoff. The movie kind of just ends, though they do the obligatory look back and see the ghost standing at the window scene. I can see why this film bombed which is truly pathetic considering it only cost 15 million to make! The actors range from disinterested (Kate) to completely overacting and annoying (everyone else, especially that father). There are a couple of jump scares and a couple of nice gore shots, but overall, this film is a big disappointment.

Was drawn into seeing 'The Disappointments Room', with as said for many films seen recently a cool poster/cover, an intriguing if not exactly novel premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

'The Disappointments Room', simply put, turned out to be a terrible film and waste of potential with next to no redeeming values and so much done catastrophically wrong. One of the worst films seen in a while, which is saying a lot for somebody who on the most part has been encouraged by their film/television watching and has more often than that been quite generous. Decent idea, horrendous execution.

Lets start with one positive. The scenery is atmospheric, if wasted by the schlocky way the film is shot and particularly edited.

However, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their irritating and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrate. Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The acting is also terrible, expected better from Kate Beckinsale whose performance is overwrought and anaemic, and the effects are ropy at best.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling while the pace is uneven, dragging in a lot of the first half, which goes on forever and fails to get going, and never is it exciting. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness and the lack of tension and suspense. Too many elements are introduced, and then dropped, barely explored or don't go anywhere, sometimes even all three.

A lot of the film completely fails to make sense, both in underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations. There is a real sense that a lot more scenes were filmed and then dropped which explains the choppiness and lack of coherence. The threat is poorly used and poses very little threat. The film completely peters out with one of the most abrupt climaxes/endings seen for any film in a while.

Overall, terrible, disappointment is a very apt word to sum it up. 1/10 Bethany Cox

i enjoy any work done by W. Miller. i follow all his projects and i find them just amazing. everyone of us can understand diffrently the point of a movie or a story, but there is always a sparkle in everything good or bad. so, for those who think that this is a bad movie, i tell you guys to watch it again and see if, maybe, you missed the point. All the respect for the cast, producers and writers. a great job done one more time.

Saw the movie today. I enjoyed watching Kate Beckinsale and I believe she made her character believable, you feel what the character is going through. However, this was supposed to be a HORROR, not a drama on Lifetime Movie Network. Some revelations are made before the middle of the movie and the pace just slowed and there were no more surprises or plot development. You know that part of a horror movie where the evildoing of the antagonist, the fighting back of the protagonist create a crescendo of visceral emotions in the viewer leading to a catharsis and release, that never happens. There were more than a couple of jump-scares but the possibilities from the plot and the characters just were not followed through and explored enough for the horror to happen for me. Nice story though and definitely worth a watch if you like scary TV dramas.

'The Disappointments Room' was one of the worst movies I have seen in theaters in recent years, period. Where do I even begin? There were almost two completely different plots running at the same time where attempts to mesh the two together failed atrociously.... For a "horror" tagged movie, this was hardly any form of the word. I understand clearly that there are different variants of horror but I fail to see any form of it take hold... I felt no pull to any of the characters. They all felt very dry and boring... I felt Lucas Tills character was absolutely pointless. He served zero purpose... I am sorry, I am getting bored and annoyed just trying to remember this film.

Case and point, this film was horrible. Would not recommend it to anybody. Would not recommend it to get drunk to and laugh at. Would recommend it to torture inmates.

OK I was looking forward to this and I was just satisfied with the movie. It looked good had a dark look and tone but was very average throughout. The acting was quite wooden at times which maybe the script has to be blamed. A few good scares but not enough to warrant a cinema release.

I wanted to see it as it's been getting slammed badly.

It was not terrible but was not great either.

Surprised That the name was what it was should have been called The Room.

A not bad score but not enough to spend $13 on this.

Should have gone VOD.