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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peña made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Room 6

Story
When Amy and her fiancé, Nick, are out driving, they happen to be in a car accident. A ambulance crew arrive on the scene and takes Nick, who's badly injured, away without telling Amy to which hospital they're taking him to. She goes to the nearest hospital in hope to find him there, but he seems nowhere to be found. Outside the hospital, she meets Lucas who was in the other car that Amy and Nick collided with, and he tells her that he's looking for his sister who was in the car with him, and that the ambulance crew took her away as well. Together they start searching for where their loved ones could've been taken, and their search leads them to a hospital that burnt down several years ago.

Comments
Room 6 is a low-budget horror movie that deals with the supernatural, but that does not look very low-budget at all, in fact, it looks really good. At first I had no idea what to expect, but the movie opened up with such an awesome scene, I was sure I was in for a good ride. And I was, until the last 20 minutes or so, but more about that later. The movie opens with Amy (Christine Taylor: Zoolander) laying on a operating table just about to have some surgery done. She can't move a muscle or talk for that matter, but she is awake, and the doctors are preparing to open her up. She tries to get their attention, to tell them that she's awake, but since she can't move, it's of course an impossible task. Talk about your worst nightmare, but it makes for a great opening scene, and gets the viewers full attention right from the start.

Later on, Amy and her boyfriend Nick (Shane Brolly: Underworld, Underworld: Evolution) are out driving when they all of a sudden crash into another car. The people around the scene of the accident seem strange, and when the ambulance crew arrive, they act even more weird. They drive away with Nick in the ambulance, and do not tell Amy to where they're taking him. She panics and heads to the nearest hospital, but he's not there. Then she runs into Lucas (Jerry O’Connell: Stand by Me, Scream 2), who was in the car they collided with, and he tells her that he's looking for his sister, and together they begin to search for their loved ones. While searching for Nick, strange things start to happen to Amy, and she starts to see people turn into zombie-like creatures for just a brief moment every now and then.

A young girl from the class that Amy's teaching (she's a school teacher), points Amy in the right direction to where to find Nick. It seems he has been taken to a hospital called St. Rose Mary's, but later Amy finds out that the hospital burnt down five years earlier. As she keeps searching for clues, things start to become more and more strange, and Lucas appears to be quite different from what she first had thought.

I must admit that the longer this movie kept on going, the more and more excited I got. I haven't seen a movie that have had such a good pace, such a good story, and so many scares and supernatural happenings all the way throughout in a long time. As I kept watching, Room 6 just kept getting better and better. But since the movie proved to be so darn good, I started to fear for the actual ending since that might make it or break it. And unfortunately, it did break it, and even if it didn't ruin the whole experience, the movie came out looking way worse than it did half-way through.

Even if I personally didn't find Room 6 to be very scary, it still had a lot of great scares to offer. The effects used in this movie are really good, the monsters make-up is great and they look pretty creepy, and the use of flickering lights and shadows in the hospital gave the movie an eerie feel. Best thing though with Room 6 is that it never slows down. Things/scares occur so often, but it never feels too much, it just makes it more interesting and draws your attention. It's fast-paced, but still you get a pretty well-developed story, and even if you don't get to know the characters that well, it's still enough for them to be belivable, especially Christine Taylor's character.

Room 6 is of course not a completely original movie, if you've seen Jacob’s Ladder, you'll notice that it has borrowed a few things from that flick. When watched it, I also felt that it reminded me a lot of Silent Hill. Been playing those games like crazy for years, it had a slight Silent Hill feel to it, especially when being in the haunted hospital. I don't mean anything bad with this though since Room 6 still managed to stand on its own and create a pretty creepy atmosphere.

We get to see some hot naked nurses drink blood, and while that might sound pretty awesome, I still felt that that scene was pretty tacky and unnecessary (no, I'm not gay), but it felt like it took some of the seriousness away. Save that stuff for slasher flicks or whatever, this story was just too good to have stuff like that in it. Anyway, it's a minor complaint that doesn't really matter at all. The big complaint though is for the actual ending, or the last 20 minutes or so. I don't wanna give the ending away, but the last remaining 15-20 minutes at the hospital just became more and more ridiculous and uninteresting. The movie was really great all the way, but that last remaining part was a big let-down.

Final Comments
Room 6 looked smashing, had tons of scares, great effects but a pretty bad ending. It's not the whole world though, and you should not avoid the movie for that single reason alone. The acting was really good, and not even comparable to your normal low-budget horror type of acting, as this was truly high-class acting. Christine Taylor really stood out and made a terrific job with her character, and while the others were not bad either, she definitely stole the whole show with her performance. I've only seen her in comedies before, but she really proved that she can do horror as well, and that was a cool thing. Even though I didn't care for the ending, I would still really recommend Room 6 since it had so many other great things going for it.

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Room 6

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Mike Hurst
WRITING CREDITS: Mark Altman, Mike Hurst
GENRE: Horror, Supernatural, Thriller
CAST: Christine Taylor, Jerry O’Connell, Shane Brolly
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 94 min

RATING: 7/10

Room 6 Website/IMDB Click here
Room 6 Trailer Click here

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