The Immaculate Room Review- Human Frailty Fills A Blank Space

There is nothing so fragile as a relationship built on insecurities and lies. Mukunda Michael Dewil‘s The Immaculate Room takes an intriguing premise and reminds us humans are flawed, and stress makes monsters of us all. In his psychological thriller starring Emile Hirsch and Kate Bosworth, a young couple gambles on their strength as individuals and as a couple for a big payday.

The title is deceptive. It sounds like a sequel to The Disappointments Room(a disappointing affair) with its complex meaning yet minimalistic sound. However, it is much like the room itself. The Immaculate Room is straightforward yet wrought with peril. The stark white room is colored only by beige blankets, a red eject button, a DOS prompt screen, lights that change according to the time of day, and Kate and Mikey are given red and blue medical-looking clothing, respectively. Symbolism abounds in this thriller that swings at the biggest life questions, even if it doesn’t always connect.

Kate and Mikey have been chosen to participate in a part experiment/part They Shoot Horses Don’t They style contest. If they can stay in this sterile white room with no interaction with the outside world and no stimuli aside from their imaginations for 50 days, they will win 5 million dollars. For Mikey, this is a curiosity. But, it is something he is doing for Kate. He grew up with money and doesn’t need a life-changing amount of money.

He is a vegan artist who values life and experience over money. On the other hand, Kate grew up poor and thinks his viewpoint is easy without any different perspective. A point she repeatedly drives home. It becomes painfully obvious right from the beginning that these two have significant issues. While Mikey is painted with a kinder brush, he is passively insufferable. Kate is a controlling, negative, brittle young woman so ruled by her insecurities that she can’t see anything beyond her face in the mirror.

Viewers will be tempted to ask themselves if they could survive the 50 days. We judge Kate and John’s choices. The contest is billed as a psychological experiment after all. Kate and Mikey arrive in the room in a flourish of excitement. Nothing bad couldn’t actually happen to them, right? Yes, the space screams of a blank slate waiting to be covered in blood, and their only meals are odorless, colorless, tasteless liquids delivered in white milk cartons with no text or pictures, but it’s only 50 days.

They have each other to keep them occupied, and the occasional Voice that announces the time of day and the occasional rule violation. Beyond that, there is nothing. That is until Mikey becomes bored and pays for a “treat” to the tune of 100,000 dollars. A single green crayon arrives seemingly out of thin air, and suddenly the space doesn’t feel as empty. Mikey fills the walls with doodles and drawings of anything and everything. All of this is met with scorn from Kate, which should come as no surprise. She is a mess and needs everyone around her to be that way too.

Little by little things creep in figuratively and more pointedly to push them toward their inevitable conclusion. This is a broken relationship, and the experiment can only end one way. A literal Checkov’s Gun appears in the room to remind the couple this isn’t just a money grab. They will have to earn their cash prize.

The empty spaces are compared to a mirror later in the film by Mikey, and he isn’t wrong. For nearly half of the time, Kate and Mikey stay in control and grounded by the selves they want to be. They wax philosophical about big life questions. Conversations about trust, pain, trauma, privilege, and empathy are superficially discussed without any profound illuminations. Mikey and Kate are content to live inside their collective bubbles until the wheels come off, that is. Then, when the Immaculate Room feels they aren’t progressing enough, it offers messages from family members that hurt more than they help and tempts the pair with treats that further muddy the waters.

We get very little insight into why the experiment was devised. Mikey explains that an eccentric millionaire with more money than scruples fancies himself as some social scientist. The millionaire made his bones by destroying an average family to prove he could. Why this would encourage anyone to become involved, I don’t know, but at least Mikey was aware of the kind of person he was getting into business with. On the other hand, Kate was laser focused on the money and cared less about her possible danger. We never learn what the motivations behind the experiment are, but from the outcome, it seems relatively clear the contestants are simply rats in a maze. They are subjects to be poked and studied with no value beyond their behavioral statistics.

While some might feel like the payoff isn’t as climactic as it could be, it is more realistic, making it more brutal. Everything about the couple is as blank as the Immaculate Room. Their personalities and their relationship never really take shape. By the time the credits roll, we know them just slightly better than we did when they first entered the room. Perhaps that is by design. They are as vacuous and empty as the space they agree to live in. It doesn’t matter who is good or bad because everyone is a little of both and, under the right circumstances, capable of anything.

Bosworth and Hirsch do extraordinary work fleshing out what amounts to one dimensional characters. They throw themselves with wild abandon into the empty room, and Bosworth, in particular, is so fragile despite her overt controlling nature; she is a force. Hirsch turns a label into a Macbethian soliloquy in an especially telling scene. Dewil finds interesting ways to light and shoot his tiny cast in the stark set. Nothing feels boring, only antiseptic and fatalistic. His knack for artistic framing is evident.

A handful of brilliant performances and a promising concept go a long way to create a mood that is as claustrophobic as it is reflective. Ultimately Dewil’s film isn’t a descent into full-blown madness. Instead, it is a slow, quiet whimper, as are most things in life. That is the brutal genius in The Immaculate Room. As simple as the set, the script lets the actors and viewers fill the story with monsters of their own design. We are, after all, our own worst enemy.