The United Kingdom, soon, civil war rages. A woman wakes up in a blindingly white cuboid cell. Using its sophisticated functionality, her captor tortures her for information, information she claims not to have.
A woman wakes up in a white cuboid cell! It's a good thing they said cuboid, or I might think this movie was influenced by The Cube franchise. All jokes aside, White Chamber is definitely inspired by The Cube and Saw franchises; not only in the general aesthetic and premise of torturing people in a limited space, but also in how they maximise the emotional impact with minimal cast and budget.
In all honesty, the less you know about the film, the better the pay-off, so if at any point during this review it piques your interest, check it out on Netflix and then come back and read the rest of the review later. Regardless, I will avoid talking about the story itself as practically everything would be a spoiler.
The film has two main characters, played by Shauna Macdonald (from The Descent franchise) and Oded Fehr (from The Mummy and Resident Evil franchises) with only a few other characters of any significance to the story. There is, therefore, a heavy reliance on the acting performances from Fehr and Macdonald, and it's safe to say that White Chamber starts out strong. Amrita Achariais introduce into the environment, and effectively takes up the role of the audience's moral compass, to great effect. A heavily sympathetic character whose "new" position helps to make the exposition feel more organic.
What works to the advantage of the story is the withholding of information. We don't know who any of the characters are at the start of the film, yet we are instantly thrown into this sadistically violent environment amidst an active war-time interrogation. The effects used at the start of this film are great, and learning the extent of this cuboid's abilities keeps your interest as you try to figure out how you would survive a similar situation. The story isn't linear though; the film starts at the beginning of the climax and frequently provides flashbacks to fill in selected information gaps as we move towards the conclusion.
This element of mystery is a double-edged sword as the specifics of the story are potentially the weakest aspect, and that is down to the necessary withholding of information. The backstory and history are mostly fed to the audience during the flashbacks and can sometimes feel like info-dumps; piles of exposition thrown in to provide meaning in a somewhat inauthentic fashion. While the film tries to grow an emotional investment with the introduction of personal and political motivations, it lacks the strength and power that Fehr and Macdonald's performances had at the film's fruition.
Director and screenplay writer Paul Raschid either went too deep down the rabbit hole when deciding on the political context of the film or isolated the environment too much from the world he was building. Still, it does entertain and manages to manipulate and subvert expectations on multiple occasions. The limited environments look great and have a fascinating clinical purity to them. White Chamber isn't ground-breaking by any measures, but there is definitely something for those that like their torture porn.