‘The Oak Room’ Review: Dir. Cody Calahan [Fantasia 2020]

The Oak Room began life back in 2013 as a stage play. One of the cast members, Ari Millen (Orphan Black), shared the script with his friend, co-founder of Black Fawn Films, Cody Calahan, and said it would make for a great film. After reading, Calahan agreed and go to work adapting the story with the help of playwright Peter Genoway. Set over the course of a single evening during a raging snowstorm, The Oak Room sees a drifter return home to the blue-collar bar in the remote Canadian town where he was born. When he offers to settle an old debt with a grizzled bartender by telling him a story, the night’s events quickly spin into a dark tale of mistaken identities, double crosses, and shocking violence.

The project fully embraces its stage show origins, and proudly demonstrates that it is possible to replicate that feeling of being at the theatre through film. By choosing to stick so closely to the play dynamic, i.e. letting the words and performances speak for themselves, Calahan creates a super intimate and engrossing environment. With few locations and little in the way of traditional Hollywood shine (explosions, car chases etc), you are able to concentrate on what is, and isn’t, being said between our characters. As the stories unfold between bartender and patron, the audience is invited to pull up a pew, grab a drink, and enjoy the tales that are being told. There’s a distinct ‘ghost stories around the campfire’ vibe that sets in, one that makes the viewer cosy and on edge simultaneously.

With the premise of the film being a series of yarns, The Oak Room does have an air of the anthology film about it, but by carefully binding them all together, there’s a strange Inception feel to the proceedings that helps to elevate the concept. The stories themselves are deliciously dark and disturbing, and are told in an intricate and, at times perplexing, manner. Rather than just be story after story, The Oak Room layers story upon and within story, which means you have to pay close attention to keep up. Keeping the different narratives open and parallel to one another allows maximum tension to be built. Usually an anthology collection of stories would have a lot of peaks and troughs with each story beginning, building and then ending. Instead, each tale begins and builds side-by-side, making for a brilliant finale as everything reaches the big crescendo.

Ari Millen returns to play Michael, the same character he played in the original stage run, so he has a head start on the rest of the cast in terms of connecting with his character, but all the performances here are exceptional. It’s not often that film actors are given the opportunity to be still and inhabit one environment. When they are, it’s typically within the confines of a single location horror where all that is asked of them is to be afraid. Here though, our sets of characters each have their own bar environment to inhabit, but it is the characters themselves and what they have to say that is the focal point. As Steve, Breaking Bad‘s RJ Mitte proves that he’s capable of much more than just showing up at the dinner table. Playing opposite him is Peter Outerbridge’s world-weary bartender Paul, and the interplay between the pair is electric, with Outerbridge’s age and experience in the industry adding a extra level of gravitas to the production. There’s a similar dynamic between Millen’s Michael and Martin Roach’s Richard, with their portion of the film shrouded in a veil of unease and mistrust. These feelings eventually lead to the film’s most shockingly violent moments. It’s as if everything leading up to this moment has been winding a spring coil up and then suddenly it’s let go; things get rather graphic.

The film reeks of isolation, and not just because the clusters of men are cut-off from the rest of the world due to the storms outside. Each man is also emotionally isolated, kept from fully expressing their feelings, desires, and regrets. It enables an air of pathos to permeate the environment, and given our own containment, echoes some thoughts and emotions we may be going through too. Calahan also manages to somehow capture that wintry feeling in spite of barely any exterior locations. Optimum viewing conditions for The Oak Room would include a nice bourbon and a roaring fire to feel fully immersed.

The Oak Room offers a departure from what we’ve seen Cody Calahan direct before. His previous directorial offerings, Antisocial and Let Her Out, have played much more within the realms of gory horror, but here he moves into a more subdued thriller arena. It’s a film that gets the audience thinking and feeling; Calahan pumps every ounce of atmosphere he can into every single frame. The result is a more mature and assured feature, and hopefully a direction he continues to work in.

An absorbing and intricately tangled web of tales that lets the performances speak for themselves, with The Oak Room you’re not just getting a great night at the movies, but a night at the theatre too.

The Oak Room was reviewed at Fantasia 2020.