HBO’s ‘Room 104’ may make for a short stay
There are probably a lot of filmmakers who would love to get an HBO series greenlighted based on the rather thin premise of a different tale every week in the same nondescript hotel room.
Mark and Jay Duplass pull that off to uneven success in “Room 104,” debuting today on HBO. Well, it saves on sets. Though, to be fair, the anthology keeps the action confined to the room and a cast of two or three people.
The Duplass Brothers have said they wanted to showcase some young filmmaking talents in the series. Mark Duplass writes a number of the episodes, Jay Duplass stars in one, but they leave the directing to others.
While some of the episodes — I have not seen all 12 — show flashes of creativity, there is something synthetic about the series, like a hotel room’s pretend hominess.
The first episode called “Ralphie,”
directed by Sarah Adina Smith, a babysitter (Melonie Diaz) who has been called in to watch a young boy named Ralph (Ethan Kent).
The father isn’t interested in her credentials and doesn’t even bother introducing the boy, who is in the bathroom.
When he finally walks out, Ralph is eerily sweet, but soon warns her about “Ralphie,” his evil brother still in the bathroom.
Obviously, there is a twist coming as there are in most of the series’ episodes. “Room 104” ventures into Rod Serling territory.
It’s not exactly the “Twilight Zone,” though, as the HBO series doesn’t have the dramatic structure and flair of Serling’s stuff.
Mostly they seem like stagey exercises. The plots usually are of the lady or the tiger sort of thing. So even if there are interesting moments, at times you just want the resolution.
“Voyeurs,” from writer-director Dayna Hanson, is an absorbing exception. Free of dialogue, it begins when a middle-aged cleaning lady (Dendrie Taylor) starts poking around through dregs of what had been a party in the room the night before — a slice of birthday cake, a card in an envelope with money, boxes of takeout, dregs of wine.
Slowly, memories of her younger, wilder self flood in and soon a full-blown version emerges, played by dancer-actress Sarah Hay (“Flesh and Bone”) in a bright-red nightie. The two then begin a surreal pas de deux that suggests that within the dowdiness of the cleaning lady there remains sensuality and a sense of craziness.
At 24 minutes, the episode is still a couple of minutes too long, and the lighting, which uses red and blue hues, could have been brighter at times. Still, “Voyeurs” demonstrates a visual inventiveness and a welcome change-up from the other stories, which are mostly dialogue-heavy.
Considering its very latenight time slot, I’m not sure HBO is expecting anyone will be rushing to watch “Room 104.” If you have 25 minutes, you might check out an episode or two but wait until there is enough on the network’s on-demand site to have some choices.