| The Killing Room | |
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DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Jonathan Liebesman |
| Produced by | Ross M. Dinerstein Bobby Schwartz Guymon Casady Ben Forkner |
| Written by | Gus Krieger Ann Peacock |
| Starring | Chloë Sevigny Nick Cannon Timothy Hutton Clea DuVall Shea Whigham Peter Stormare |
| Music by | Brian Tyler |
| Cinematography | Lukas Ettlin |
| Distributed by | ContentFilm |
| Release date(s) | 2009 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Killing Room is a 2009 psychological thriller film directed by Jonathan Liebesman and starring Chloë Sevigny, Nick Cannon, and Timothy Hutton. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.[1] It is being distributed internationally by ContentFilm.[2]
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Four individuals sign up for a psychological research study only to discover that they are now subjects of a brutal, modern version of the Project MKULTRA indoctrination program.[2] One by one, the subjects are brought into a large, white room, in which the tables and chairs have been bolted to the floor. They are each given a questionnaire to fill out. In the meantime, a researcher enters the room, ostensibly to give an overview of the study. He indicates to the subjects—three men and a woman—that the study will take approximately eight hours to complete, at which time they will each be paid $250. Upon completing his introduction, the researcher shoots the female subject in the head with a gun and promptly leaves the room. Over the next few hours, the remaining three male subjects will be subjected to additional physical and psychological brutality. Only one subject will survive the ordeal. In the end, it is revealed that the goal of the covert program is to achieve in human civilians a phenomenon similar to apoptosis in cells (a comparison noted in the film), by developing "civilian weapons" akin to suicide bombers.
The film met mixed reviews upon release, garnering a score of 67% on ratings aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.[3] MTV's Larry Carroll held the film in high regard as he nominally labeled it as the “best movie” at Sundance 2009, praising it as “brutal, daring and utterly unpredictable”. Alongside other films with a claustrophobic air, he characterised it as “Cube with better actors. Reservoir Dogs without the hipness. Lifeboat with a modern spin on war-time paranoia.”[4]
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