Some movies are bad. Some movies are so bad they’re good. And then there’s The Room—a film so incomprehensibly awful, so cosmically misguided, that it defies all logic and reason. It’s not just bad. It’s not just hilarious. It’s legendary. The Room is what happens when you give an alien pretending to be human six million dollars and a camera. The result? A cinematic black hole of absurdity that has somehow blessed us all.
The “Plot” (A Word Used Loosely)
Trying to describe The Room’s plot is like trying to recount a fever dream you had after eating too much expired sushi. Technically, it follows Johnny (played by Wiseau himself, because of course he does), a successful banker (we are told this but never shown), who is engaged to Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a woman whose only discernible character trait is “pure chaos.” Her entire arc consists of deciding—completely out of nowhere—to ruin Johnny’s life for fun. Why? Who knows? Wiseau sure doesn’t.
Lisa is cheating on Johnny with his “best friend” Mark (Greg Sestero), a man who reacts to everything as if he’s just woken up from a two-day nap. And that’s about all the coherence you’re going to get, because this movie is basically a collection of half-baked subplots that Wiseau introduces and then immediately forgets about, like a kid writing a story and getting distracted by a squirrel.
- Denny, the weird neighbor-kid-adult(?), gets caught up in a drug deal that is never explained or resolved.
- Lisa’s mom casually announces she has breast cancer, then never brings it up again.
- Characters appear and disappear like Wiseau was pulling extras off the street at random.
- And let’s not forget the tuxedo football tossing, because when you don’t understand how humans interact, you just assume this is a thing people do.
Acting? Not in This Movie
Tommy Wiseau doesn’t act so much as he exists in front of a camera while attempting to mimic human behavior. Every line delivery sounds like it was recorded in a parallel dimension and transmitted through a broken satellite. His infamous “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” moment isn’t just overacted—it’s the sound of a man who genuinely does not understand how emotions work.
The rest of the cast does their best, but it’s like trying to perform Shakespeare while your house is on fire. Juliette Danielle plays Lisa as if she was programmed by scientists studying pure malice. Greg Sestero, meanwhile, spends the entire movie looking like he just realized he left his stove on.
Every conversation in this movie feels like it was written by a malfunctioning AI:
Johnny: “Hi, babe.”
Lisa: “I’m going to cheat on you.”
Johnny: “Oh, hi Mark.”
Yes, this is actual dialogue. It exists. It was written, filmed, edited, and released into the world.
Direction, Cinematography, and Whatever This Is
Tommy Wiseau clearly wanted to make an Oscar-worthy drama, but what he actually made was a film that looks and feels like a soap opera shot by a group of time travelers who had never seen a camera before. The lighting changes at random, the rooftop scenes look like they were shot in Microsoft Paint, and the sex scenes… oh God, the sex scenes. Imagine a National Geographic documentary on dolphins, but with 90% more awkward bellybutton rubbing.
Also, why is there so much football? Why do these grown men throw a football two feet apart, like they’re allergic to physical exertion? Why are they in tuxedos? Why does this happen multiple times? It’s like Wiseau saw a football once, misunderstood everything about it, and thought, Yeah, people will relate to this.
The Cult Phenomenon
Despite—or more likely because of—its sheer insanity, The Room has become one of the greatest midnight movies of all time. People don’t just watch this movie. They participate. Screenings are interactive events, where audiences throw plastic spoons at the screen (because of the baffling framed spoon photos in Johnny’s apartment), shout the dialogue in unison, and collectively lose their minds every time Wiseau stumbles into a scene like he forgot he was in a movie.
Even Hollywood took notice. James Franco’s The Disaster Artist (2017) gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Room, proving that every baffling decision was somehow even worse behind the scenes. Wiseau wasn’t just making a bad movie—he was actively sabotaging himself at every turn, and the result is a gift to us all.
Final Verdict
The Room isn’t just a bad movie—it’s a once-in-a-lifetime disasterpiece. It’s the Citizen Kane of unintentional comedies, a film that collapses in on itself so completely that it somehow becomes amazing. Wiseau set out to make a heartbreaking drama, and instead, he created the funniest accidental comedy ever made.
Should you watch The Room?
Absolutely. But never alone. You need friends, a crowd, and at least five pounds of plastic spoons. Only then can you truly understand the magic of Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece of madness.
