Notro Films
‘Fermat’s Room‘ is a diluted Spanish version of ‘Cube‘. Four mathematicians are bought together by an unknown outsider ‘Fermat‘, with the goal of solving the most difficult enigma ever set.
The individuals all experts in their relative fields are invited to a room in a disused warehouse in the middle or nowhere. Here they are challenged to complete puzzles in order to prevent the room walls from closing in and killing them all.
So do these four brilliant brains crack the enigma? Well this is where the film starts to become a bit tedious and predictable. Gradually and weakly the story unfolds, creating minuscule amounts of tension which are unfortunately over acted and wrapped in a sort of unnecessary murder mystery cliché. This is unfortunate because we see good murder mystery on television practically every day, I mean look at ‘Jonathan Creek’, ‘Miss Marple‘ and ‘Poirot‘, you’d think Spain would have an equivalent televised production.
Even the puzzles that are set out for the “great minds” are ones we’re all familiar with, it never feels as clever or puzzling or even simple as it should be. Which means that all the possible tension that should be building never really does. Even after we work out what’s going on (pretty early in) it seems all too average, the ending becomes more disappointing as we realise that actually, there is nothing more to the puzzle than an overly basic whodunit, in fact, there was no real puzzle to begin with.
I found that one of the film’s key problems was that you just don’t care about the characters, which is why the inevitable unveiling lacked the tension and dramatic impact these films require. ‘Fermat’s Room’ just feels like a tired mash-up of a ‘Miss Marple’ meets (the brilliant) ‘Cube’. It would be better suited as a one off television drama, as it’s not as exciting or as clever as it thinks it is and is essentially sub-par ‘Jonathan Creek’.
Emily Paget