10 Midnight Movies You Need To Watch

9. The Room (2003)

Viewed with an enthusiastic audience, The Room is some kind of classic, a jaw-on-the-floor experience whose mindboggling awfulness is attributable to writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau, the only thespian ever to bring down the house with the line €œHi, Mark.€ Looking like a genetic experiment that sampled DNA from Willem Dafoe and a lizard, Wiseau has all the charm and grace of a street-corner drug dealer. When not delivering soap opera dialogue in his impenetrable East European accent, he€™s constantly chuckling apropos of nothing, even while listening to a story about domestic abuse. And he€™s the romantic lead in The Room, a vanity project Wiseau financed himself after failing to sell it as a novel, a play or a script. You can see why: it€™s Wiseau€™s love letter to himself, with characters constantly remarking how wonderful he is (even the florist says, €œYou€™re my favourite customer.€) Cast and crew were constantly quitting or being fired, so characters are introduced only to disappear moments later, leaving gaping holes in the narrative. In one scene, a character responds to her mother€™s cancer diagnosis by telling her that €œthey€™re curing people every day€ and the topic is never broached again. Strange doesn€™t begin to cover it.