“Room 203” is another shoddy attempt at an American horror film obsessed with pagan imagery and demons from old European mythology. The film presents two best friends, Kim and Izzy, moving into a new apartment that has a literal hole in the wall in one of the rooms, a beautiful stained-glass window with depictions of knights killing each other, and a terribly creepy and intrusive man as the landlord. What more might be needed to make a stereotypical horror film, you ask, and “Room 203” adds Celtic mythology into the mix to complete it as a drab and forgettable watching experience.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Room 203’ Plot Summary: What Is The Horror Film About?
As renovation work goes on in apartment 203 of a grand old building, a young worker, Chad, tries to cover up a gaping hole on one of the walls as he waits around for his girlfriend, Lena, to arrive at the place. At one point, Chad sticks his hand into the hole and gets scratched up by something inside, and he also pulls out a necklace with a strange-looking amulet on it. Lena finally comes in the evening, after it is dark, and her boyfriend gives her the necklace, putting it on her neck. As Chad then opens up beer bottles, the bones in Lena’s body crackle horribly; she shatters a beer bottle with her bare hands and slits her own throat with it.
Kim White is a young woman about to start her college education, most possibly in a new city, and she has decided to move into a newly rented apartment with her best friend, Izzy. Kim’s parents, however, are not at all supportive of this idea, owing to Izzy’s past history with drugs and cases of overdose, and they warn their daughter that they would not keep any contact with her if she does actually move in. This ultimatum has no effect on Kim, not because she is not attached to her parents, but because she knows that her parents are making wrong demands out of their judgmental perspective, and she steps out of their car and enters the building. She meets with Izzy near the elevator, and the two excitedly make their way towards their new home, but a creepy-looking man with a flat cap on his head intervenes. This man introduces himself as Ronan, the landlord of the apartment, and mechanically tells the girls what they can and cannot do inside the premises. The only significant information here is that they are not allowed to go to the basement of the building ever, and the fact that only Ronan stays on the same floor as the girls’ apartment, with the rest of the flats empty. Kim and Izzy are mesmerized by a large stained-glass window in the small but cozy drawing-room, and they are not too disturbed by the images painted on it of medieval knights killing each other. Kim also sees a small but noticeable hole on the wall of her room, visible even with wallpaper put on it, and tries to cover it up by hanging a mirror over it. This does not work, as the mirror either keeps tilting or falls to the ground. Izzy also sees this hole, which grows bigger as they try poking around with it, and she pulls out a necklace with the amulet on it. The two best friends share great moments together in each other’s company, but Izzy Davis’ struggles with her past soon come up. The young girl still finds it difficult to cope with the loss of her mother to a drug overdose, and what is seemingly worse, Kim had been unable to be with her during the funeral because her parents did not approve of Izzy and therefore did not let her go. Izzy starts to put on the necklace often, which starts a terrible habit of sleepwalking for her every night.
What Is The History Of Room 203 And Its Hauntings?
As Kim reaches college late on her orientation day, the polite and charming orientation leader, Ian, gives her a private tour of the campus and the course. It is revealed that Kim is a student of journalism, who prefers written and published news over online variants of it. Ian is also in the same department, and the two quickly grow interested in each other. Meanwhile, Izzy struggles with the pressures of following her passion in life; she wants to be an actress. She has a tough time looking for acting opportunities and then getting rejected in the few auditions she is actually called for, and the woman takes to heavy drinking. Knowing Izzy and her life’s difficulties out and out, Kim decides to write a paper in her course on her friend’s life, and also asks her professor whether she should take permission from her friend before doing so. Sticking to the code of journalism, the professor tells her that it is not compulsory to ask or tell her friend about it if she does not disclose her identity in the work. Back at the house, Kim is woken up one night by a fluttering noise and sees a crow slither into the hole in her wall, which has now grown and somewhat resembles a decomposing wound. She had also earlier found a heavy metal music box with the names of a couple written inside it, and now, on this very night, Izzy walks into her room holding the music box in her hand, with blood spilling down from her head. Kim takes care of her and keeps her company that night, and Izzy seems to be normal again the next day. Her sleepwalking episodes continue, and get even scarier when she walks down into the basement one night, as if in a possessed trance, and Kim has to bring her back. One constant during all of this time was the fact that Izzy was wearing the necklace with the amulet on all these nights.
Since the very time of moving into apartment 203, Kim had often seen the landlord, Ronan, sinisterly keeping an eye on the two women. Kim had even tried to be friendly with the man, with general greetings or gestures like that, but Ronan never responded and would instead keep staring. Now he reprimands the tenants for having gone down to the basement, where they are never supposed to go, and asks them never to repeat the feat. Kim, one day, stumbles upon the landlord, having entered their apartment while they were out, and staring attentively at the stained-glass window. Kim shares all this and also Izzy’s sufferings with Ian, and the man asks her to dig deep and investigate the apartment, also offering to help her. Together they read up on the internet about a bank manager named Liam McNally who had murdered his pregnant wife, Karen, before killing himself in this very same apartment 203. These are the same names inscribed inside the music box that Izzy always carries around during her sleepwalking or hauntings. Kim meets up with Milton Briggs, the janitor who had reported the murder so many years ago, and the man reveals that although Liam had chased and killed his pregnant wife, the baby boy inside her womb survived, as she had possibly just given birth to him. Milton is unable to say what will happen to that boy in the future, though. Ian does his own research into the images present on the stained-glass mural in apartment 203, and he connects them to Celtic pagan symbols and finally to the Irish mythology figure Morrigu, who often appears in the form of a crow and symbolizes death.
Meanwhile, Izzy stumbles across Kim’s academic paper that she had been writing on her life, and the young woman is extremely angry at the fact that her best friend did not even tell her that she was trying to capitalize on her life’s sufferings. Izzy confronts Kim about this and then angrily leaves the apartment, while Kim frustratedly rips open the hole on the wall, and a shriveled-up, nasty old hand from a dead body falls out of it. Right at this moment, Ronan enters the apartment and abducts Kim, tying her up and bringing her to his own apartment. In a fit of rage, the man now reveals that he is the son of Liam and Karen McNally, and the necklace that has been bringing curses upon everyone wearing it originally belonged to his mother. What all he says next can be summed up as—Liam had probably gotten involved with dark magic or demon worship or other spooky stuff like that, which had brought the curse of Morrigu onto the family. Morrigu, who needs to be provided with food, a human body and soul, that is, had come after the McNallys when they were unable to provide her with any offering. It was this demon who had made the man kill his wife and then kill himself, and now Ronan had learned of all of this. It is also revealed that this curse chooses its victim through the necklace with the cursed amulet, and had earlier killed many men and women whom all Morrigu feasted on. But Izzy was fighting back against the curse and was being successful till now, probably because of all the sufferings the poor girl has already lived through in her young life, and therefore has not been killed yet. Fearing that Morrigu will come after him if she does not get her food, Ronan now intends to kill both the tenants and present them as sacrificial offerings.
‘Room 203’ Ending Explained: How Does Kim Save Izzy’s Life In The End?
Ian now rushes to Kim’s apartment but does not find her there and is instead seen to be being seduced by a possessed Izzy, who quickly kills him. Kim manages to survive inside Ronan’s apartment and craftily escapes the flat, and rushes to her own. Here she sees her dead boyfriend and also sees Izzy, possessed, swiftly going down the stairs to the basement. Kim follows her friend, narrowly escaping the grasp of Ronan. Now in the dark shadows of the basement, quite literally, since the film tries to make itself too dark visually and even becomes difficult to follow, a long chase occurs between Izzy, possessed by Morrigu, Kim, and Ronan. Finally, when the man catches up to Kim and is about to shoot her, he gets possessed and instead kills himself. The probable possibility here might be that Morrigu, hungry for food, has killed him, not wanting to wait any longer. Or maybe Morrigu, through Izzy, kills Ronan so that she can herself have Kim, because this is exactly what happens next. Izzy shifts between her real self, who asks for Kim’s help, and her possessed self, who grins and laughs scarily, and approaches Kim to kill her. She even stabs her friend in the stomach, but just as she is about to finish her off, Kim rips off the cursed necklace from Izzy’s neck, and this instantly cures the woman.
The two friends now walk up to their apartment with the intention of breaking down the stained-glass window, but are spooked by hundreds of crows flying right outside their window in an eerie manner. Kim does finally gather up the courage to shatter the window by throwing the dead-body hand that had earlier fallen out of the hole in the wall. The two quickly escape the apartment, and Izzy rushes her friend to the hospital, where she is treated and most definitely cured. Right at the end, though, the camera moves back into the empty apartment 203 and closes in on the hole in the shattered glass window. In pitch darkness, a faint figure of Morrigu herself makes an appearance before ‘Room 203’ cuts to black. The film is a terrible hotchpotch of too many elements, none of which seem to work. Neither the drama-driven personal relationships nor the horror scenes have any effect, and overall, “Room 203” is a waste of time.
