Critic Reviews

• J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

  Gadually it slips into the indie paradigm of an alienated soul rushing into darkness, climaxing with a semiabstract montage sequence that's more rhetorical than dramatic.

• Michael Esposito, Chicago Tribune

  It ... may be the longest 75-minute film in the history of cinema -- there was a clock check 25 minutes in, after thinking 'this has got to be almost over.'

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  Expertly moody and foreboding, Room is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, but is nonetheless compelling viewing along the way.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  Williams gives a superb performance that recalls Ellen Burstyn's in Darren Aronfsky's much-praised Requiem for a Dream.

• Nathan Lee, New York Times

  A small-scale indie with bountiful ambitions, this resourceful debut ballasts a great deal of conceptual idiosyncrasy ... with strict observations of personality, behavior and the textures of space.

• Ed Halter, Village Voice

  Kyle Henry's Room is one of those rare American indies that confidently and successfully propose their own narrative logic, drawing viewers into a mental puzzle that may not contain a single clear solution.

• Charles Cassady, Common Sense Media

  Cult-phenom amateur melodrama best left to adults.

• Prairie Miller, WBAI Web Radio

  Defying do not enter, in dead end US culture.

• Prairie Miller, WBAI Web Radio

  Defying do not enter, in dead end US culture.

• Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena

  A performance de Williams é corajosa e intensa, mas o diretor-roteirista cria um drama existencialista pós-11 de Setembro bobo sobre o constante estado de medo do norte-americano médio e sua busca desesperada por algum tipo de válvula de escape.

• Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide

  Henry's film is beautifully shot and extraordinarily well acted by Williams, whose face alone says everything about the plight of working mothers who can no longer make ends meet.

• Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

  Cyndi Williams's performance in Kyle Henry's Room is a searing articulation of post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle

  It isn't an easy film, but the world's already got plenty of easy and easily digestible films. Nervy and confounding pictures, however, we could use more of.

• Peter Hanson, Film Threat

  Writer-director Kyle Henry's debut feature is a tedious tease that parades assorted sensations and signifiers past the audience for nearly an hour and a half before sputtering out in a rush of incomprehensible visual noise.

Read all 14 critic reviews