The Killing Room (2009)

Beyond Home Entertainment

R4 DVD

Ms Reilly (Chloe Sevigny) is a psychologist interviewing for a job with a highly secret government operation. As part of the test she is to watch video of a test run on four unsuspecting people who think they are doing a survey. There are some ominous signs, though. The furniture is bolted to the floor and they are being watched through a darkened window high up on the wall. It starts out innocently enough and the head of the project, Dr Phillips, enters the room to outline the project to them. As he leaves he shoots one and the “survey” suddenly turns nasty.

Ms Reilly now watches the rest of the experiment live from a control room behind the window. Although she has been assessed by a supervisor as “ruthless”, even she is horrified by what happens. One by one the survivors are killed during a series of tests. They are steered by a range of stimuli and questions. Cooperation doesn’t seem to help here. It soon becomes obvious that there will be only one left alive at the end of the tests, but what for? Any attempt to escape is punished. At the end of each session someone dies whether killed by the survivors or not. Dr Phillips tells Reilly that they can now complete the test in hours rather than days, but they need her psychological skills to refine the tests even further.

She is reminded of a secret mind-control operation dating back almost twenty years that was aimed at producing human killing machines. It was banned by successive Presidents and its very existence could not be proven after documents were destroyed. Can she do anything to stop the killings?

The film is brilliantly constructed. Following each killing there is a quieter moment before the next test begins, but the level of suspense increases each time. Not knowing what the purpose of the tests is only heightens the suspense and not knowing who will die next (or why) doesn’t help. Most of the film takes place in the sterile white room decorated only with the bodies and bloodstains and so we are able to concentrate of the victims and their reactions. The bodies are a constant reminder to them that this is for real.

If you can handle constant terror and the occasional moment of sheer horror, this is a well-acted and well-executed film. The “evil government department” has been done many times before, but I haven’t seen it done this well. And we do find out at the end what it’s all about, but that is horrifying as well.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 3 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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