In the near future, civil war has broken out in the United Kingdom. Citizen-General Narek Zakarian (Oded Fehr), leader of the UK Liberation Army, has imposed martial law, turning the country into a war zone.

A woman (Shauna Macdonald) wakes up inside a stark white cell. She is disoriented and hears a voice asking her what she remembers. She claims to be Ruth, an admin girl who has only been at the facility for 2 months. The interrogator knows that she is lying and uses the chamber to exert increasingly menacing methods of torture upon her. First the cell ceiling and floor heat up, then they grow extremely cold, and later become electrified. The purpose of this chamber is to break this woman’s resolve, and force her to reveal the truth—that she is Dr. Chrystler, the head weapons engineer for the National Security Council, and that this white chamber is being used to test some sort of new weapon to help them win the war. Citizen-General Zakarian will keep torturing this woman until he gets the answers he is looking for.

The film then cuts to five days earlier, but this time the situation is reversed. The general is now inside the white chamber, and is being interrogated and tortured by Dr. Elle Chrystler and her small team. The top-secret facility is run by Elle’s father, Dr. Edgar Chrystler (Nicholas Farrell), and the staff includes scientist Sandra (Sharon Maughan) and new admin Ruth (Amrita Acharia), all of whom are sworn to secrecy. Elle uses the chamber to deploy increasingly more vile and deplorable methods of torture on the general, all in the name of testing a new weapon that will help her side win the war. Elle had a personal vendetta against the general, and lets her emotions get to her. She wants to see this man suffer. But at what point do her actions become worse than those of the man inside the chamber? And what happens over the course of the next five days that ultimately end up with the tables turned?

I was excited to check out this film based on the premise. It sounded like an exciting thriller, not unlike Cube series. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed by this film, even falling asleep while watching the first time. Overall, I found the film quite boring and lacking in substance, becoming just a series of repetitive torture porn scenes—one of which was incredibly gruesome. It’s like Saw, but if you took away the creativity of the deadly contraptions, and just used the same thing over and over again.

While the film sets up this premise of a civil war breaking out, we never actually get to see any of that. It is all hearsay, taking place off screen. The entire film takes place in one location—this facility with the white chamber. Once it jumps back in time 5 days, we do get to learn more about the backstories of the characters, and their motivations for being in this facility. However, the film eventually builds to this big twist at the end that feels totally unearned and out of left field. It is like the writers wrote themselves into a corner and then came up with the easiest way to fix things, but this turn of events feels like such a cop-out that didn’t really make any logical sense—the characters would have considered it or figured it out ahead of time! The performances themselves were fine, but the actors needed a better script.

The Blu-ray presentation itself looks and sounds excellent, with a crisp, clean and detailed picture that never feels over-saturated by the bright white chamber. And the audio track provides clear dialogue while also capturing the gruesome sounds of what is going on in the chamber. Unfortunately the only bonus material included is the film’s trailer.

What’s Included:

Film: (1:29:03)

Blu-ray:
• 1080p / Widescreen 2.39:1
• Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English 2.0 PCM Lossless
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

• Trailer (1:51)

Final Thoughts:

Unfortunately, White Chamber was a disappointing film that I had much higher hopes for. It had a strong premise, but was poorly written and executed. The film tries to stretch out a single idea for 90-minutes, getting really sloppy with the writing by the end. It felt like a low budget film, not because the effects looked bad (they actually looked quite good), but due to the single set and repetitive nature of the story. I recommend skipping this one, or checking it out on cable or renting it before making a purchase.