The Letter Room (2020)

The Letter Room Review

The Letter Room is a 2020 live-action short film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. It’s a moving flick.

When a kind-hearted prison officer is transferred to the letter room, he soon gets involved in an inmate’s personal affairs. This movie features such a strong revelation in the third act where the woman whose letters the protagonist had been reading is actually married and not as enamored with her previous boyfriend. Life moves on and this part was a sad, but honest depiction of humans being survivors.

The first half of the movie is way too slow for my liking. It’s a pretty simple storyline, so thirty minutes was too much for it. The end result is a film that lags more often than not, but the message that everybody needs someone to think of them and send them messages was beautiful. The central performance from Oscar Isaac is excellent and he really transformed for this role into a rather unattractive, clumsy man.

The Letter Room is a moving and well acted film, but it is overly simple in its narrative.

My Rating – 3.6