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Gloria and her
daughter Vicky move in with Gloria's
colleague, Ana, since she has a big house with many
rooms to spare. Ana performs abortions as a living,
and when one day Gloria finds out that she's pregnant,
Ana does her best to convince Gloria that she should
have an abortion... but no one could have ever imagined
what the result would be.
After having seen the outstanding movie, The Baby's
Room, The Room Upstairs probably felt worse than it
actually was. Sure, it's nicely shot and it's got a
semi-original plot, but it's not scary nor
entertaining and there are so many peculiar subplots
that are never explained. For example; they hint at
Ana being a psychotic lesbian who's longing for love,
but they never really take this anywhere (the supposed
terror in the movie is something much more ridiculous)
which leads me to the question, why make Ana so
peculiar? It didn't add anything to the plot but
confusion.
Anyway, The Room Upstairs is, just like many of the
other movies from this anthology, more of a
mystery-thriller than a horror flick. It tells the
story of a single mother, Gloria, and her daughter
Vicky. They move in together with Ana Torres since
she has many rooms to spare in her big house and
since Gloria simply can't afford living in an
expensive apartment anymore. It doesn't take long
before Gloria finds out about the previous woman who
lived with Ana, Christina, who seem to have vanished
into thin air (we're obviously meant to think that
the girl getting dragged over the floor in the
opening scene was Christina - but it doesn't take a
genius to figure out that that is way too obvious).
Anyhow, the mystery of Christina also vanishes into
thin air as Gloria becomes pregnant and decides to
have an abortion. Here, a new ridiculous mystery
unfolds as the dead foetus has disappeared! Where is
the dead baby? Could Gloria's daughter be responsible,
or is it something even worse?
Yeah, The Room Upstairs sure is a ridiculous mystery-
thriller and it's not a very interesting one either.
The characters are all pretty odd and it's difficult
to root for any of them. I'm guessing that the only
reason as to why director Narciso Ibáñes Serrador was
hired to direct a movie for this anthology was because
he was also involved in the 80's version of this
anthology (that's right, this is actually a sequel).
While the directing is all right, this looks much more
made for TV than the other episodes. Ultimately I can't
recommend this segment. It's dull, it's underdeveloped
and it's just not that interesting.
Some blood, not much.
I might as well stop reviewing the soundtracks for
horror movies as it all sounds the same these days;
generic strings and piano music.
Uneven segment which is, so far, the worst movie in
this anthology (mind you I have two movies left to
watch when I write this review). It's not horrible
but it's too dull, it has to many strange subplots
that are never really explained and as I said before,
it's simply not very entertaining.
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