Review: ‘The Oak Room,’ a testament to the sheer power of good stories

There’s nothing quite like small town bars. The locals, so often wild and wily characters of the sordid, petty kind, gather around the watering hole to swap war stories, stories about that time they beat Jim Bob down the street to a pulp, and even stories about their loneliness. Cody Calahan’s The Oak Room is a low scale, intimate story about one such small town bar that finds itself both in the eye of a blizzard and a raving lunatic. It’s so moody and claustrophobic that it’s no surprise it’s based on a stage play (of the same name, written by Peter Genoway); there is something innately ornamental about the presentation and the performances. And that’s why it works.

Steve (RJ Mitte), a self-described drifter who dropped out of college, pulls up a seat inside a tavern on his way back into his hometown. A blizzard rages and rips through the surrounding countryside, thick forests drenched in darkness and cold. In his attempts to settle up old debts with the surly bartender Paul (Peter Outerbridge), he offers up a chilling tale of revenge in exchange. The tension between them is coarse, riding just on the surface, as Paul reprimands Steve for going off to college and leaving his old man Gordon (Nicholas Campbell) to run what he’d hoped to be the family business. In his absence, Gordon (or Gordie as he’s affectionately known) died, and Steve never came to the funeral. To say wounds of the past run deep is an understatement.

Calahan uses such personal grievances as the fuel to a well-oiled machine — the give and take is captivating, allowing for an outstanding character-driven piece. Featuring only two prime locations, The Oak Room is intensely claustrophobic, often switching between flashbacks with abandon. Initially, the structure is jarring, but it quickly settles into its own weirdly off-kilter rhythm. Even the central story, the one Steve is telling, centered around a chance encounter between Michael (Ari Millen) and Richard (Martin Roach) the previous weekend at another bar in town, is told backwards. And there’s a very good reason for that. It doesn’t make sense in the moment, but the payoff is well-earned.

The Oak Room doubles down on characters, later offering up a flashback story around Gordon as he shares his sorrow about his son leaving. Steve, as we come to learn, is totally broken, carrying around years of guilt, and his knack for storytelling is the only way he can truly express his regret and extend any sense of closure.

In the end, all we really have are stories: stories about living and our many adventures, stories about our pain, stories about out fleeting happiness. The Oak Room masterfully hammers the importance of stories and storytelling deep in the viewer’s mind. Whether we’re posting selfies on Instagram or piecing together a thread about our new favorite film on Twitter, our whole existence is nothing but stories. Cody Calahan’s latest feature is one fine example that you don’t need smoke or mirrors to tell a thrilling horror story.

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