Reel Advice: Room 205

By Steve Anderson Nov 26, 2008, 13:17 GMT

Wanting a fresh start, Katrine moves into a university dormitory but quickly learns the myth about a ghost of a former resident who was killed. The myth soon becomes a terrifying reality. ...more

I have to admit...the way things were going was not looking well for the material released in the Ghost House Underground collection.  It was looking like a vast array of still-steaming crapola that could only charitably be called mediocre.

But this week, we have broken the streak...somewhat...with Room 205, a Danish import that proves if you slog through enough coal eventually you'll manage to find at least a flawed diamond.

And in this flawed diamond, Katrine, a girl who's mother has just died, finds herself moving all the way to Copenhagen to go to school.  She's found some roommates who seem at least provisionally nice, but following an ill-fated hookup with one of them, things start to go wrong very fast. 

Trying to bully Katrine out of the university, her roommates use the legend of a ghost of a girl who died in the dorm. The problem with this, of course, is that the legend is actually quite real, and the ghost in question is set free from its prison of a bathroom mirror to run amok.

I know, right now, it sounds kind of baffling.  And it is, just a little bit--one would think they took WAY too many cues from recent release Mirrors.  But it's also got some fairly creepy moments, and that gives us a bit of hope.

At first, I thought this was going to be yet ANOTHER huge embarrassing disappointment from the people who'd already brought me SEVERAL.  Watching the Danish version of The OC for the first half hour certainly wasn't a real quality bellringer.  In fact, I got to the point where I was muttering  irritably at my TV, when does something CREEPY actually happen? 

And then, zombies.

Yeah, I know.  Sure, it was just Katrine's roommates acting like TOTAL pricks, and then the whole mirror thing threw in and things just kept getting weirder...but still.  At almost EXACTLY the half-hour mark, Room 205 will stop being a chatty, bubbly TV series and start being a vague ripoff of Mirrors with plenty of freakishness.

Oh...and the part where the lights in the hallway steadily go out in sequence?  It's been done before, but I love it.  Every time I see it, which is admittedly not often, I enjoy it.  I actually wish I saw it a bit more often.

This is the reason it got three stars.  Sure, this isn't the greatest of movies.  But it's the best I've seen yet of the Ghost House Underground series and I can't help but think that that merits a little extra credit. 

Even the ending features a pretty nifty twist, which actually makes a LOT of sense given the events that preceded it.  It'll be worth watching.

The special features include audio options, English and Spanish subtitles, a behind the scenes featurette, director's commentary, and trailers for The Last House in the Woods, Brotherhood of Blood, Room 205, No Man's Land: Rise of the Reeker, The Substitute, Dark Floors, Trackman, and Dance of the Dead.

All in all, so far, this is high water mark for the Ghost House Underground series.  Sadly, this still isn't saying much.

Room 205 is now available at Amazon. As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.