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DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Liebesman
FEATURING: Nick Cannon, Clea DuVall, Timothy Hutton, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Stormare, Shea Whigham
PLOT: A group of civilians who think they are participating in a paid psychological test have actually been tricked into an off-the-books government experiment testing the limits of human endurance under extreme hardship and torture.
COMMENTS: MKUltra was a CIA program with the modest aims of determining how much the human mind could be manipulated to do the bidding of others. Their goals ranged from developing irresistible interrogation techniques to enlisting unwitting civilians as assassins. (It’s a favorite topic for podcasters; the CBC’s “Brainwashed” is a solid place to start.) In 1972, the director of the project retired, saying that the entire effort had been useless; the CIA responded by giving him its highest honor and then destroying most of their files on the program. It took multiple congressional investigations for any of this to get on the record, and there will undoubtedly be much that we will never know about the American government’s assault on its own citizens.
(By the way, I really have to hand it to the CIA for the masterful troll job they performed in sharing their role in MKUltra. It’s clear that the Freedom of Information Act required them to come clean about their activities, but they certainly weren’t going to make it easy on anyone, hence the brilliantly unreadable online post they created to share the depths of their depravity.)
A pre-title card in The Killing Room makes clear that while MKUltra was publicly disavowed, there’s no way to know for sure that the government isn’t still up to something shady. After all, wouldn’t it make sense that the War on Terror would dredge up some of the old plan’s nastier elements? Thus we have all the premise we need for a familiar tale of regular people discovering they’re in a trap and desperately seeking a way out, with some rumination on Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts about liberty and security for extra seasoning. Think of it as “Cube meets the Milgram Experiment with a dash of Saw” and you’re pretty much there.
As a thriller, The Killing Room is an effectively shrewd piece of low-budget, high-stakes filmmaking. Director Liebesman exploits the claustrophobic setting with a mix of jittery handhelds, obtrusive surveillance footage, and lingering closeups. He also finds a clever balance of techniques to manipulate his audience, from ticking-clock suspense to queasy uses for blood. Most impressive, he kicks off the experiment proper with a brilliantly executed piece of shocking violence, a terrific blend of sound, editing, and acting that goes off like a bomb. Whatever it is, it’s not boring.
This is the kind of juicy-monologue, emotionally heightened movie that actors love to be in, and some really get to strut their stuff here. Hutton, in particular, relishes the darkness and toughness of his character, and he gets to shine opposite a dangerously nervous Whigham and a jittery, soft-spoken Cannon who plays massively against type to great effect. DuVall is wasted in multiple respects. The unsteady alliances of the subjects are counterpoint to the manipulation taking place on the other side of the one-way glass, where Stormare, sounding like a Nazi bean-counter and looking like a nondescript businessman, is attempting to recruit the scrutable Sevigny into his shadowy cabal. She may be the film’s weakest link, representing the audience’s expectation of honor and decency but driven by a yearning for power that we can almost see but not quite grasp. We’re shown that she’s conflicted, but is she really? Has she been cleverly maneuvered by Stormare, or is she just weak? And is that weakness something that could stand in for any of us confronted with a moral choice? Or is she an appeaser for personal gain?
We are trained from the outset to expect misdirection and deception, so much so that I was certain for a long while that Sevigny would turn out to be the only honest person in the piece. Whoops. One of the film’s best twists is its lack of twists. I spent much of the film convinced of the unreliability of the narrative, but not only is it fully committed to its premise, it actually manages to make suspense out of that skepticism. If you’re thinking this seems like some seriously evil stuff they’re up to, then you’re thinking right.
Of course, that simplicity is also a sticking point. Ideally, you don’t want to overthink a plot like this; we’re here for shock and suspense. But The Killing Room wants to be relevant, and once they drop in an image of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, the filmmakers are demanding to be taken seriously lest we trivialize a tragedy. So let’s engage on those terms for a moment. What’s the plan here, Secret Department Within the CIA That the Movie Posits Is Actively Working to Undermine Liberty in the Name of Security? Are we supposed to kill 3 out of every 4 civilians in order to get to the one who will be most malleable for the aims of the shadow government? When do members of the public start getting suspicious about a rash of disappearances, particularly from loved ones who we’ve seen are expecting a call? How many men in white lab coats and hazmat suits are engaged in this covert operation, and is there really not going to be a single whistleblower among them because they’re so desperate for approval? The why behind The Killing Room’s plot is a noble call for decency, but to think about it immediately starts to undermine the horrors at play.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Rooprecht. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
- Factory sealed DVD