The Room (2003)

dir. Tommy Wiseau

It’s simply the best! Better than all the rest! There’s a reason The Room has gone down in history as the best worst movie of all time: because it simply is. Everything about The Room is just the perfect level of pure ineptitude. Tommy Wiseau, proud director and producer and writer and main star, is such a peculiar entity. His indeterminate accent, his wild hair, his growling and screeching, his insistence on subjecting a poor eighteen-year-old actress to awkward sex scene after awkward sex scene. There is barely a plot in The Room – it’s ostensibly a “love triangle” but it’s more about how women are evil manipulative bitches who take advantage of the good men in their lives. The acting is hideous, not just from Wiseau but from absolutely everyone, including creepy man-child Denny and whiny old crone Claudette. Not a single scene manages to be coherent. There’s the strange flower shop scene, where Wiseau bursts into a store, buys some roses, pets a dog, and leaves, all within about fifteen seconds. There’s the breast cancer scene, where Claudette reveals her diagnosis only for it to never be mentioned again. There’s the Chris-R scene, where Denny is threatened at gun point because he apparently “bought some drugs” off a guy who never showed up before and never shows up again. The Room is just a spectacular synthesis of everything idiotic, everything outlandish, everything crazy, and all done with the utmost sincerity. At a screening of the film in London once, Wiseau was asked who had inspired him to make The Room, beyond his already stated influence of Tennessee Williams. His response: “Well, you see, you have Johnny, you have Lisa, and you have Denny, so you see, three is better than two. Next question.” This bewildering, head-scratching confusion is The Room. It genuinely is the greatest bad movie ever, by probably the greatest bad filmmaker ever.