You could call The Room this generation's Rocky Horror Picture Show. There's midnight screenings, people dress up in character and the hardcore fans yelp lines of dialogue and shout catchphrases at the screen.
You could call it experience cinema. You don't watch The Room so much as you participate in it. Some of the more hardcore folk sitting around us clearly live it.
But whereas Rocky Horror was an infectious work of subversive genius, The Room is just plain ol' rubbish. Its biggest redeeming quality being the fact it doesn't have one.
At the film's heart beats a fairly simple yet slightly bizarre love triangle. But this is cluttered up with numerous subplots that spring up out of nowhere and are never resolved. There's a major character's breast cancer bombshell that's instantly dismissed and forgotten about, an orphan's unexplained run-in with a gun-toting drug dealer and a strange and lengthy sequence in which the male cast dress in tuxedos before stepping outside to casually throw a ball around in a back alley.
Other problems include characters that routinely appear and disappear with neither trace nor explanation. Each new face prompting joyous shouts of "who the f*** are you?!?" from the rowdy audience.
There's dodgy and seemingly unnecessary green screen effects, liberal and repeated use of the same scene-setting stock footage and way too many eye-wateringly bad, extended softcore sex scenes, complete with R&B slow jams and scattered rose petals.
The acting barely qualifies as such and the dialogue is gloriously and fantastically nonsensical. For example, why use the word 'fiancee' when you can instead use the term "future wife"? Repeatedly.
The man behind this cinematic disaster is the mysterious writer/director/producer/star Tommy Wiseau. Clad all in black with billowing goth locks and an unplaceable eastern bloc accent he looks a little like a vampiric Christopher Walken.
Wiseau's past is deliberately foggy and his self-made fortune is covered in questions. The Room was a vanity project that he funded entirely himself, shelling out a spluttering and bewildering US$6 million ($9.09 million) to get it made - though rumours about the real reason for the production swirl wildly in the wind. Nevertheless, he remains an odd figure and a complete original.
And to be fair Wiseau does exude screen presence. Not the good sort, mind. It's more a trainwreck charisma that prevents you from looking away whenever he's on screen.
Incredibly, The Room was based on his own life experience with a woman he planned to make his future wife. This is massively surprising. Not because the idea of a cheating fiancee is so unfathomable but rather because the movie appears to have been written by a space alien who has heard of human interaction but doesn't actually have any idea as to how it works.
Wiseau's own character Johnny, the wronged man at the centre of events, talks only in catchphrases, beginning each conversation with the same, "Oh, hi!," and closing them with the same, "don't worry about it".
Basically, The Room is a big ol' mess. In its own twisted way that's quite an accomplishment. It takes a very real and serious lack of talent to make a movie as bad as this. It's right to celebrate it.
Monthly screenings happen all around the country and I hugely recommend getting along to one. It's a weirdly unique and totally fun night at the flicks.
Just don't forget your plastic spoons. I won't tell you why you'll need them, you'll find out for yourself soon enough.
