The Room, Called the Worst Movie Ever Made, Gets the Honest Trailer It Deserves

Dubbed “the world’s greatest bad movie,” and “the best worst movie ever,” Tommy Wiseau’s The Room has become so legendary in its suckitude that it ascended to a whole new plane of reality. A new movie from Seth Rogen and James Franco, The Disaster Artist, will chronicle how The Room got made; but first, The Room gets the Honest Trailer that it deserves.

“The Citizen Kane of bad movies” sounds so awful as to be almost alluring, right? But I have a confession to make: I’ve never actually succeeded in making myself sit through The Room, though its history is now legendary and I have been steeped in that legend. “It’s not just bad – it’s intoxicatingly awful,” writes the BBC, in attempting to explain why a movie that by most accounts is objectively terrible has also developed a huge cult following and in-depth media attention. “Not since Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, a legendary turkey from 1959, has a film been so revered for being so rubbish.” They summarize the phenomenon’s “plot” for us:

Set almost entirely in one bland apartment – but not, confusingly, in one room – it revolves around Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a frowning young blonde who is engaged to a muscle-bound banker, Johnny (Wiseau), but who seduces his best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero). And that’s about it. An insanely repetitive 99 minutes, The Room has Lisa complaining again and again to her friends and her mother that she doesn’t want to marry Johnny, and the rest of the running time is taken up with punishingly long sex scenes involving red roses and diaphanous drapes.

You perhaps see why I did not go out of my way to view this movie. But over time The Room‘s cult status grew and grew, and midnight screenings of it started popping up in cities around the world, attended by devoted fans; it has become somewhat of a cultural event. The Disaster Artist, the new film about the making of The Room, has been receiving strong reviews and is currently running at 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Meet Johnny, your everyday all American Dracula,” Honest Trailers begins. “Most moves cut straight to the interesting parts, but The Room is not most movies.” I’ll let you take it from there.

But if you’re curious how the Room within a Room movie is going to look, here’s the trailer for the Franco/Rogen effort, which has elicited a lot of laughs every time I’ve seen it in theaters.

I have a feeling this Honest Trailer may be about as much of The Room as I’ll ever experience, but if you’re a devotee, please tell me what I’m missing in the comments.

(via Honest Trailers, image: screengrab)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com

Author

Close

Kaila Hale-Stern

Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

twitter