[Breathing Room]
Plot:Thrown naked into a desolate room with thirteen strangers, Tonya (Ailsa Marshall) discovers that she is the final contestant in a deadly game. Restrained by lethal electronic collars, the players must utilize hints and tools from a box marked "pieces" to find both an exit and the reason for their abduction. One by one the players are eliminated as their "curfew" begins and the lights go out. With each dead body comes another clue, which they use to discover that one of them is the killer. The question is...which one?

Cast:Ailsa Marshall, Michael McLafferty, David Higlen, Brad Culver, Kim Estes, Eve Sigall, Keith Foster, Austin Highsmith, Jeff Atik, Terri Marsteiner, Sara Tomko, Steve Cembrinski, Bryce Gerlach, Brandon Stacy, Patti O'Donnell.

My Thoughts:"Saw" influenced, yet still decent.

Review:Say what you want about the "Saw" series. For better or for worse, it has created a flood of similar indie horror films. "Are You Scared", just to name one. Now, comes John Suits and Gabriel Cowan's "Breathing Room". The pic opens like a "Saw" movie...with a young woman named Tanya being thurst into a room full of strangers, who like her...have no idea why they're there, who put them there, or how to get out. All they are told, is that they are in the middle of a game that has strict rules, and severe consequences for those who break the rules. Sound familiar?

At any rate, Tanya is in this situation...and now she, along with this group of strangers...have to find a way out of the large warehouse-looking room..and they'd better do it fast. Because once the lights go out, somebody dies. And this keeps happening over and over again whenever one of the characters enters a critical situation or makes a critical error. With cryptic clues hidden in metal boxes on the wall, written messages on the wall, and recorded messages...will someone be able to piece together the necessary answers and escape this nightmare?

"Breathing Room" is a very dramatic movie, which is one thing it has over the "Saw" films. The "Saw" films create more suspense and action with scenarios like this. "Breathing Room" however uses heavy drama to push itself along. This doesn't work sometimes and works at others times. Due to some of the cast being flawed talent-wise while others are pretty good...led by Ailsa Marshall who plays Tanya in the film. The movie does manage to keep the viewer intrigued and interested by the situation these characters are going through, interested to a certain extent.

But eventually the formula just gets tired, and you kind of wish that these characters, which none of....other than one or two are worth pulling for, would get taken out to progress the story already. But one of the biggest mistakes of the film is that it takes place in a well lit set piece. Films like this have to be set at nighttime, it's the only way they'll be effective. It's just the way it is. But instead, this film stays in the daylight for the duration, and there's just no element of fear circulated at all.

And a horror film needs atleast a small element of fear to be effective. "Breathing Room" does smarten up though in it's final act, when the remaining players in the game have some "interesting" info revealed to them late in the contest...information which quickly spreads through the group in the form of paranoia and extreme mistrust. This leads the film, and culminates into quite an intriguing finish. Which I must admit, does an excellent job of keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat. "Breathing Room" has a great beginning, but a pretty weak middle.

However, it finishes up nicely and overall manages to be something kind of unique, and kind of different coming out of the straight-to-dvd box. It's not a fantastic movie...it follows alot of cliches, and doesn't offer up alot of blood, gore, or good performances. But with all of that having been said, it is worth seeing if you love situation horror which explores the dark side of the human psyche, human nature, and human behavior overall.

Positives:Good final act, good opening 15-20 minutes. Nice ending, and a slightly unique storyline.

Negatives:Slightly too many contrasts to the "Saw" films, most of the cast weren't very good actors, the movie doesn't progress the plot strongly enough in the middle portion of the film. The daylight setting.

Overall:Two stars.





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