When Brian (Peter Mastne) agrees to let his brother Jeremy (Rich Holton) stay with him whilst in town for work, they quickly discover it was a bad idea. Two people stuck in a small studio apartment, one very uptight and the other totally laid back, it's not long before they begin to grate on each other, and tempers flare. But is there something else behind their animosity towards each other?
The first thing that springs to mind when watching Enter the Room is the Covid lockdown. Writer/director Harry Waldman and his team have managed to recreate that sense of both isolation and being trapped that many were faced with when the world was brought to a standstill. In fact, they have made that tiny studio apartment feel very small indeed. And by clever use of colours, editing and score they dial up the intensity of the atmosphere within it, as brothers Brian and Jeremy come to blows.
From the very start everything is on a knife edge, and despite only being 15 minutes long, Enter the Room makes for a jarring watch. Mastne and Holton bring two powerful performances as the brothers reaching the end of a collision course. Their relationship - as troubled as it is - feels incredibly genuine. And just when you begin to take a side, you find yourself wondering how they didn't see this seemingly inevitable clash coming. Which is about the same time that you start to realise this isn't just the clashing of polar opposite personalities, and there is something else behind their strained relationship, something unresolved.
Without slipping into spoiler territory, Enter the Room is actually a gripping look at trauma, and the terrifying effects it can have on someone. Only the movie does it from a slightly different perspective, which allows Waldman to examine both the wide ranging and wide reaching effects trauma can have, and the differing ways people react to it. And when he hits you with the reality in the closing moments of the film, not only does everything that happens within that apartment become clear, it makes you wonder if you've ever witnessed behaviour like that and dismissed it as something else.
A gripping examination of trauma, viewed through the story of two brothers and their troubled relationship, as they attempt to co-exist in a tiny apartment.
9/10
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