Telluride Review: Lenny Abrahamson’s ‘Room’ Starring Brie Larson & Jacob Tremblay

Equal parts thriller, mother and son love story, and aftermath picture of coping with the outside world, Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room” is a deeply moving and suspenseful drama that often has the power to emotionally devastate. Perhaps just as dolorous is how the picture can never quite live up to the transformative performances of its leads, Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, who deliver astonishing and revelatory turns.

“Room” begins in media res: five-year-old Jack (Tremblay) and Ma (Larson) have been held captive for seven grueling years in a small, shed in some undisclosed town. Their existence is made up of routines to keep the innocent boy occupied, and lies to make Jack, who has never known anything other than the claustrophobic confines of their cramped 11x11 cell, ignorant of the world beyond their prison. Their mother/son convention also includes Jack sleeping in an armoire to avoid witnessing the traumatic ritual of their captor entering his mother’s bed...