Animal Room (1993)

"For those who found "A Clockwork Orange" too preachy and moralistic...  Guilty Viewing Pleasures
"...a tight, tense thriller that looks much bigger than its independent budget.  Joseph B. Mauceri, FearsMag

Editor's Note In the near future, a student is caught using drugs. He is then put in a controversial rehabilitation program called the "Animal Room" where his life is threatened by the anarchistic youths already there. A violent and apocalyptic movie in the tradition of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, complete with some scenes of graphic violence.

	Amanda Peet
	Lori Heuring
	Matthew Lillard
	Neil Patrick Harris
	Catherine Hicks
	Amy Vincent - Cinematographer
	Craig Singer - Director
	Craig Singer - Writer
	Craig Singer, et. al. - Producer
	Georges N. Krivobok - Production Designer
	John A. Gallagher - Executive Producer
	Sabine Hoffman - Editor
	Craig Singer - Producer
	Sabine Hoffmann - Editor

The Onion AV Club 5 of 10
A slapdash mixture of Z-grade exploitation and laughable pretension, Animal Room takes place in a nightmarish dystopia where teenagers drink and use drugs, no one pays attention in school, and violence can strike anywhere, even during low-budget recording sessions for the post-Danzig Misfits. - Nathan Rabin

The Onion A.V. Club 6 of 10
Set in a future that looks almost exactly like the present, Animal Room is a Clockwork Orange knockoff, originally filmed in 1995, about an LSD-loving malcontent (Neil Patrick Harris) placed in the titular room as part of a high-school program for juvenile delinquents. It's a controversial program--in part because it seems to entail nothing more than sticking a handful of hoodlums in a room with a VCR--that brings him into conflict with the leader (Matthew Lillard) of a gang of toughs. A slapdash mixture of Z-grade exploitation and laughable pretension, Animal Room takes place in a nightmarish dystopia where teenagers drink and use drugs, no one pays attention in school, and violence can strike anywhere, even during low-budget recording sessions for the post-Danzig Misfits. When not stealing blatantly (and badly) from A Clockwork Orange--in one scene, Lillard and his gang terrorize a wheelchair-bound man and his pretty wife--writer-director Craig Singer alternates shakily between brutish nastiness and pathetic attempts at social commentary...Camp aficionados should appreciate the handful of scenes in which Harris wigs out on acid inside an empty theater, in part because his trips look and feel like orange-tinted White Zombie videos, but Animal Room fails even as camp. - Nathan Rabin