Secrets, Suspicion and Storytelling in ‘The Oak Room’: Review

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The Oak Room is a simple but effective thriller which explores the power of a good story – or several.

Somewhere in rural Canada, in the middle of a snowstorm, Steve (RJ Mitte) appears at a bar in his hometown. After spending a few years ‘drifting’, he has a debt to settle with the bartender, Paul (Peter Outerbridge). The unimpressed bartender demands cash, but Steve says he has something better than cash: a story. While Paul is predictably skeptical of this proposition, he allows Steve to continue, to fill time before another old acquaintance arrives. What follows is a layered tale of lies and violence, which plays with dialogue to create an intriguing narrative.

The Oak Room is a remarkably restrained film. Given the limitless possibilities which ‘storytelling’ as a framing device offers, director Cody Calahan never gets carried away. In fact, the film which is adapted from a stage production, often functions like a play. The secondary storyline is also set in a bar, which immediately suggests narrative balance, even before the parallels are fully explored. Moreover, the moments of violence are sprinkled sparingly throughout the film, making them all the more shocking. While slow at times, this ultimately adds to the atmosphere. Tension develops as a natural consequence of the oppressive environment, rather than being forced on the viewer through gratuitous bloodshed.

The premise of the film evokes 2014’s Predestination, which also opens with a stranger talking to a bartender in an otherwise empty bar. However, the two films quickly diverge in the second act and their differences speak to The Oak Room’s individual appeal. While Predestination opts for an extreme ending, Peter Genoway’s script concludes as simply as it opens. For certain viewers, this will be a flaw of the production. The threads of the story are tied in a knot, rather than looped in a complex bow. If you are waiting for a perfect twist which draws every strand together, the conclusion may be unsatisfying. On the other hand, it is refreshing to see a film which has such confidence in dialogue’s power to be engaging in its own right.

As a result of this simplicity, the cast are particularly important in keeping the film entertaining. RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad) plays Steve with an unsettling arrogance, as if he constantly has more information than the viewer. He is perfectly balanced by Peter Outerbridge (Nikita, Orphan Black) as Paul, who is at once gruff and genuinely likeable. At times, their dialogue is heavy with exposition, but they carry it convincingly. Equally, Ari Millen (part of the original stage cast) and Martin Roach (The Shape of Water) who play roles ‘inside’ the story, are menacing and entertaining in turns.

A particularly revelatory moment comes when the script calls for Ari Millen’s character, Michael, to pronounce that “it’s like a God damn movie or something”. Taken alone, this is an overdone attempt at meta humour. However, a three-second long reaction shot from Martin Roach turns it into something else. His cold skepticism at the expression is so clear that the comment evolves into a genuinely amusing aside. This showcases the actor’s skill, but it is also representative of the way the film plays with clichés. The screenplay acknowledges familiar tropes, and through this, transcends them.

The Verdict

In short, The Oak Room is a functional thriller, elevated by the effort put into it. Every element comes together to create an impressively atmospheric narrative. While nothing has technically changed between the beginning and end, the slow reveal of context means that, for the viewer, everything has. Given its premise, the film could have settled with exploring fiction’s power to entertain. Instead, it strikingly represents the power of stories to impact reality, and the difficulty of establishing a clear divide between the fictional and the real.

Rating: 7/10

Words by Lucy Palmer

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