There's been a host of films with the plot of "people trapped in a room", regarding human lab rats run through a series of experiments, until one survivor remains. Movies instantly coming to mind include, "Saw", "Cube", and "House of 9". Really, "The Killing Room" is no different, except in this movie we get an understanding as to who is behind the experiments. Four civilians are selected to fill out forms for a little money to answer some questions and act as guinea pigs for what they believe are relatively harmless experiments..what they can not possibly expect is that they are in for a horrifying experience, trapped in a room with no truly available exits. Sure there are escape attempts, but as we see on the outside, preventative measures have already been established to stop them. The lab rats include Timmothy Hutton, Nick Cannon, Shea Whigham(Splinter),and Clea Duvall..gnarly, eclectic cast, although one of them is killed right away to prove a point, with the remaining trio trying to figure out their situation and how to resolve it. Questions, and a gun, are sent into the plain white room with a bullet proof window(..the window is there for a purpose I will explain in a moment)through a slot in a locked door. Whoever answers the question correctly, lives, until one remains. Looking on from other rooms are Dr. Philips(Peter Stormare, stolid, with a bubbling intensity just seething underneath the surface)and his possible new recruit, Ms. Reilly(Chloë Sevigny),chosen because of her reputation for being ruthless and cold. We see, for a long time, that the situation developing before her disturbs and bothers her, although she tries intently to hide it. While those in the killing room are being tested, we can see she is as well. An indoctrination is taking place and we soon discover that this process has a lot to do with the enemy, given birth as the planes were flown into the World Trade Centers.

I honestly believe many will find this to be rather generic material, rather familiar and derivative. While we discover as the movie continues just why these terrible acts are taking place by Americans to Americans, in such a cold-blooded fashion that it sours your stomach, and the fact that those committing such deeds have an agenda which differs from those of other films of it's ilk like "House of 9" or "Cube", there are also striking similarities which I feel will leave many a viewer feeling rather ho-hum over the whole deal. The ending and the inner turmoil, developing as tensions and fear arise, is very akin to those examples I have mentioned. Good cast salvage the plot, especially Chloë Sevigny, because, like those trapped inside their own cell, she's battling a lot of personal emotions as well. Does she attempt to help them, or will Ms. Reilly join this covert operation, a secret project the government keeps silent for a purpose of engaging the enemy in a whole unique way, fighting fire with fire. Since Splinter has become an indie hit, many horror fans have discovered Shea Whigham, and I imagine they will be just as impressed with him here, maybe even more so. Hutton's presence here adds some major name power to the cast, which I imagine will have those who haven't heard about this movie, tuning in to see what it's all about. Cannon goes ghetto, and remains pretty much a frightened child throughout.

You may have heard of experiments conducted over the years, done in a control group (or maybe not),where people are put in a room and men in white coats look on and listen through glass walls or other such rooms and watch as (in quotes) "things happen" between or to the people. One such project, the MK Ultra, in the 1970's, had people in a control group taking drugs and observing their actions. What we learn in the Killing Room- based on these experiments- is that the program has been 'refined' over the years into what it is now: an experiment in testing who will be the last man standing in one room, and that one man will be, more than likely, willing to follow any command, chiefly to die for his country. And, as it turns out, here, the people running the experiment know who is really the top contender within a minute of their being in the room.

The film of The Killing Room is a series of really tense scenes that have characters in a room figuring out what to do juxtaposed with people up in an observation room; one of them, Chloe Sevigny, plays a newcomer who may join the organization - if she has the right stuff for it. Not every moment is cling-to-your-chair suspenseful, but rather it's director Jonathan Liebesman giving the audience a slow-burn; the clock keeps ticking from two hours down to none for the three people in the room to answer a question (it starts as four but one is shot in the head just to start things off),and depending on who answers it right, one may (or may not) die. In the meantime we see Dr. Philipps (Stormare) and his new possible underling (Sevigny) watch in clinical detail how everything unfolds, punctuated by sounds of voice-over from the other technicians and doctors observing and watching the actions.

The pace is never lacking, specially since it's a short feature length movie, and it works best as a psychological horror piece around what characters will do next. This includes Sevigny's Reilly, who one suspects will be the one that the film will become about. It does in part since we watch and wonder if she'll break away from the insane experiment, or stick with it and become as bloodless as Storemare. But really the best scenes are in that white room, and the details of the characters as they try and figure out their situation from moment to moment. Things like the blood that they spread on the wall so as to read the names of former people in the room; the questions and the answers that the men have to figure out and stick their answers to (or not); the non-pattern of the numbers counting down without consistency.

And the performances meet up to the standards needed: it's not a Saw movie full of horrid melodrama and twists, and Timothy Hutton and (surprisingly) Nick Cannon meet up to what is required of them, and then some. We do care about what will happen to them, even as they're under such duress that they come apart at the seams. The horror is in anticipation, imagining what could happen next, which is almost impossible to figure. If Liebesman has a great control over this, he has less control over other things that aren't quite as excellent, such as a music composition that is over-laid in some scenes (some of this should just be silent and be more affecting) or just too much in others. And by the very end you will feel so drained that you'll wonder what exactly was the point of it - it doesn't have anything very entertaining, but that's the point. The Killing Room leaves you pondering the inhumanity of people who stop at nothing to get their end goals. Who should die isn't as crucial as Who decides who lives and who doesn't. At this, the film is worth a look.

Four subjects, nonentities all, answer a classified ad asking for participants in a psychological study. The Principal Investigator is Peter Stormare sporting the accent of one of those mad doctors from a 1930s B movie.

The subjects are gathered in a kind of sterile, white, bulletproof room where Stormare explains that the experiment will have four phases. This is now Phase One. Then he whips out a pistol, blows the brains out of one of the subjects, and disappears in a flash.

The next half hour -- all that I could endure of the experiment -- has the three remaining subjects speculating on what's up, trying to kick their way out, arguing, suspecting one another. Up behind the bulletproof one-way mirror sits Stormare and intern Chloe Sevigny, observing.

The subjects mutter and whisper, though I can't imagine why. They can intuit that the mirror is bullet proof. Surely they must know that their audio is being picked up by sophisticated sound equipment. In the background, with Stormare and Sevigny, we hear muffled quasi-military radio transmissions full of code words: "Uncle November Romeo, terminate Phase Two Red Hot Mamma. Release phlogiston on Mark Three." These are presumably the directors giving directions to the experimenters, and they have no better communications than if they were on Jupiter.

These subjects could easily be considered dummies but, after all, they've been offered $250 for a few hours work, so why not? I'd certainly do it. And who would expect this kind of "treatment"? As part of the consumer's rights movement of the 1960s, it became extremely difficult to conduct any experiments with humans at all. I know a doc who routinely had blood drawn from his patients. He submitted a research proposal that involved drawing one cc. more blood, as part of his routine tests. He was denied permission. Is that clear? The government would allow him to draw blood for ordinary tests but would not allow him to draw a little additional blood for research purposes.

I found the movie dull, but I didn't watch it until the end, so maybe it picked up and became a real thriller, though I doubt it.