Cheap Lost Room (Mini-series Widescreen) (DVD) (Craig R. Baxley, Michael W. Watkins) Price

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Customer Reviews of Lost Room (Mini-series Widescreen)

An intriguing puzzle
The key to room 10 of the Sunshine Motel is highly unusual for a couple of reasons. One, there is no room 10. Two, it seems to fit into any standard doorknob with a tumbler lock. And three, when you use the key to open the door, it takes you into a motel room--room 10 of the Sunshine Motel, which doesn't exist. The motel room is pretty strange, too; for quite a lot of reasons actually, but what you first learn about it is that when you leave the room, it takes you wherever you want go.<
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>Detective Joe Miller (Krause) comes into possession of this key as a result of his investigation into a multiple homicide at a local pawn shop. Iggy, a teenager Miller had helped out in the past, was an employee at the pawn shop and ended up with possession of the key after a deal to sell it (for a cool two million) went bad, resulting in the aforementioned homicides.<
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>But those who were trying to buy the key are not the only ones interested in it. Shortly after Iggy escapes, he is hunted down by hired gunmen, who chase him down and shoot him...but not before he can make it to a doorway. He slips the key into the lock as the bullets enter his back, walks through the doorway, and disappears...<
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>Only to reappear in one of the rooms of Miller's home. Though he refused to help Miller when he was brought in for questioning, when things turned ugly, Miller was the only one he could turn to for help. Fatally wounded, Iggy only has a few moments left to live upon arriving at Miller's, and with his last breaths whispers "It opens every door," and then presses it into Miller's hand.<
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>Miller, having seen Iggy use the key to disappear at the police station, later experiments with the key. Feeling foolish, he sticks the key into the lock of his closet and opens it...only to find it opening on an empty motel room. He soon after discovers the motel room's transportative properties. In the morning, as he is making breakfast, his daughter, Anna (Fanning), who witnessed him exiting the motel room the night before, experiments with the key herself, and discovers another unusual property of the room: if you place something in the room, or mess up the bed linens, then close the door and reopen it again, the room "resets" itself; everything goes back to the way it was before--the bed is remade, and whatever objects were thrown into the room have vanished.<
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>This seemingly trivial point becomes much more important soon after when the man who tried to buy the key at the pawn shop, Montague (Bart), kidnaps Anna and demands that Miller give over the key for her return. In the resulting encounter, Anna, in an attempt to flee, ends up with the key and uses it to enter the motel room, only before she can enter, she loses the key to Montague. She enters the room and gets away, but is stuck inside the room when Montague uses the key to open the door again, resetting the room; so when the door opens, the motel room is as it always is, and Anna is gone.<
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>Miller manages to reclaim the key and escape and becomes obsessed with trying to find his daughter. Starting with Montague, he begins questioning those who seem to know about the key, and soon learns that there are several other Objects, all of which originated in this mysterious motel room that the key opens doors to. One of the Objects, which is possessed by Montague, is a pen that when pressed to someone's skin cooks them from the inside out. But not all of the objects are so powerful; there's apparently a watch whose only function is that it will hardboil an egg. And there are at least two orders devoted to collecting all of these artifacts, one of which believes they are pieces of God. How or why these Objects came to exist is a mystery, as is whether or not Anna is still alive. But Miller will do whatever it takes to get his daughter back, no matter what strange and dangerous paths his investigation forces him to travel.<
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>I'm not, in general, a big fan of miniseries. Most of the time it feels as though it's just a story that should have been pruned down to feature film length. This, however, is one of the better SF miniseries I've seen. It's not on the same level as the brilliant Battlestar Galactica miniseries, (or, to step out of genre, the highly-recommended Shogun miniseries) but it's quite enjoyable just the same. There's good acting, an inventive plot, and expert pacing, all of which serve to keep the viewer riveted throughout. And nights one and two both end on notes that should leave you eager for the next twenty-two hours to pass so you can see what happens next.<
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>The Lost Room is by no means perfect; there are times in which the direction could have used a more accomplished hand, or the script could have used a bit more tweaking. The show boasts a terrific cast, most of whom do a fine job portraying their characters; some of the supporting cast is not quite up to par, however, and I was never really sold on the character (or the actor's portrayal) of Martin Ruber (Christopher); likewise, Bart's interpretation of Howard "The Weasel" Montague leaves much to be desired, and Iggy, though a very minor character, has a rather odious death scene. Again, though, I think this may come down to less than best direction.<
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>Another thing worth mentioning--and I'm not sure if this is criticism or merely an observation--is that the plot of The Lost Room very much reminded me of a puzzle-oriented video game, such as Myst; or perhaps it would be better to compare it, considering the level of action and violence, to Resident Evil. In fact, I'd be very surprised to find out that a game based on the miniseries was not already in the preliminary stages of development, ready to be green-lit if the series is deemed a hit. This seems especially likely when you consider that the plot of The Lost Room doesn't seem like it would lend itself to sequels or continuation, and if it ends leaving such threads hanging, I think that it would be nothing less than a disappointment.<
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>There are many parallels between The Lost Room and the ABC show Lost, least of which is the shared word in their titles. Much of The Lost Room's tension is derived from that mysterious element--there's all these strange things going on, and no one seems to know why. There's also a compelling human drama playing out at the same time, which is really what makes the miniseries so watchable. But also like Lost, The Lost Room suffers from that dreadful possibility of a letdown; you know, that feeling you get sometimes as you're watching a complicated show or film and you think "There's no way this is all going to add up and make any sense." Fortunately, the miniseries pulls off a satisfying ending, one that might not quite live up to the intriguing mystery that comes before it, but works nonetheless.

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Discuss the ending!
Somebody needs to tell some of these other "reviewers" that a plot synopsis is NOT a review. Anyway, The Lost Room will greatly appeal to those yearning for something reminiscent of the better days of television, when the "tube" was populated by fantastic offerings such as The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It brilliantly weds a variety of elements, from top-notch sci fi, to noir, detective fiction and even classic horror; and oh yeah, it blends these elements almost flawlessly. The end result is a great entertainment the likes of which television nowadays rarely sees. I would personally have liked the show to delve more into some of its subplots, such as the religious cults that sprang up surrounding the "objects," etc. It would have been fascinating to get a glimpse of these faithful zealots yearning for miracles on par with those alleged to have happened long ago in the tales of the bible. Did they happen, or were there "objects" back then too? That would have been an interesting twist. Or what of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote that any technology sufficiently advanced would to us be indistinguishable from magic? I almost thought the show was headed in this direction when alluding to the possibility that amassing the objects and restoring them to the room would make the new owner "god." If the objects were in fact technologies to us indistinguishable from magic then this owner would be a being sufficiently advanced that, relative to us, he would be indistinguishable from our ideas of god. In the end, I love The Lost Room, but it leaves one wanting more. Its resolution is extremely weak; and I mean EXTREMELY weak. It's as though the writers had this clever gimmick but no ending, and failed to even think of one. They didn't even leave it open to interpretation in a way that raises interesting philosophical questions. There really was just no resolution whatsoever at all except that the detective gets his daughter back (but who cares, sorry.) I was hoping some revelations would unfold: perhaps the objects are alien technologies that were a part of a failed plan to infiltrate our world, etc. When Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner (remember that show? Lost--not The Lost Room, but Lost--is based on that show) ended people in England were so upset about its ending that McGoohan took his family and fled England. What many didn't realize is that The Prisoner's ending not only DID resolve things but provided a FASCINATING explanation as well. It was there, for those willing to put two and two together. The Lost Room, however, does not even throw us a bone. It's unfortunate too, for its ending does not even make sense. If all he had to do was go into the room and have someone reset it then why did he have to become an object himself? This is not a rhetorical question; someone please enlighten me. Oh well, I still loved it, especially the comic interplay between many of the characters. Priceless fun. Post Script: Here is something about the ending most fans seem to have totally missed. Joe is now an object himself. Objects are indestructible. (By the way, didn't it ever weird the guards in the psych ward out that "John Doe"--the "occupant"--never aged?) Since Joe threw the key into the room and reset it he has lost all access to the room. Why is that important? Because the room is the only place where he could ever die, since in it objects lose their power. He has his daughter back, but since he no longer ages he is doomed to watch his daughter and his new girlfriend grow old and die while he stays the same age. By losing access to the room Joe doomed himself to immortality.

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a phenomenal series
I discovered this by accident, by browsing the work of Peter Krouse. The several disc set kept my interest to the end, which is highly unusual. Most of the time, the writers flounder and screw up, but this one was thought out and works. I urge everyone to buy a copy before they are gone forever.