The Steam Experiment Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES PLOT SUMMARY
A former professor (Kilmer) concocts a brutal experiment in order to get the word out on the effects of global warming. By trapping six people in an urban Turkish bathhouse, he vows to overheat his hostages unless his global-warming hypothesis is published on the front page of his local paper.
| Val Kilmer | Jimmy |
| Armand Assante | Detective Mancini |
| Eric Roberts | Grant |
| Megan Brown | Catherine |
| Patrick Muldoon | Christopher |
| Cordelia Reynolds | Margaret |
| Eve Mauro | Jessie |
| Quinn Duffy | Frank |
| Doug Alchin | Lt. Clark |
| Rick Robinson Jr. | Walter Grubbs |
| Shelby Stehlin | Ricky |
| Michael Travis | Sam |
| Carrie Drazek | Nurse in Hospital |
| Julianne Howe-Bouwens | Officer Briggs |
| Sarah Martinez | Tara |
| Philippe Martinez |
4.70 out of 10 (174 votes)
Visitor Reviews
The heat is on and its getting hotter.
posted on 05 Aug 2009Also known as THE CHAOS EXPERIMENT, this scramble for survival flick just doesn't really hit the spot. Val Kilmer no less; when is he going to make another good movie? Kilmer plays a scientist that may have been around too many chemicals or just over compensating for his book learning. He goes to a local paper wanting the next morning's headline and his expose on global warning featured. To prove he knows what he's talking about, the deranged doc admits to holding six people hostage in a renovated hotel steam room and the heat will gradually keep rising. He wants to prove that humanity will snap under such pressures of global warning. Detective Mancini(Armand Assante)tries to beat the clock and free the hostages. Six sweaty half naked people don't have much patience when the fear and paranoia begins to boil over. Also in the cast: Eric Roberts, Megan Brown, Eve Mauro, Quinn Duffy, Patrick Muldoon and Cordelia Reynolds.
A non-horror saw.
posted on 22 Jul 2009Even if I got frustrated with almost all the characters at some points I can't blame it on poor acting. They were acting their parts.This is a mystery/thriller vehicle with good actors trapped in bad writing.In the very first minutes of the movie, the main antagonist is honoring his mentor proclaiming how much he is ahead of his time. He's years ahead of his time, no, he's light-years ahead of his time.. After that he goes on about how the protagonist doesn't have the intellectual capacity for his task. It got me thinking.. "light-years" is not a measure of time, it's a measure of distance. Sure maybe the antagonist could be kinda slow but it didn't look like they were going for that in the movie. Sure, you could say that someone is ahead of others by "miles" or something like that but it doesn't really matter to me. I thought it was kinda dumb and that is what I thought of the movie as well. I really like Val Kilmer and I really hate that I so often see him i movies like this.If this is broadcast on TV and you can't fall to sleep - it's worth the watch. But that's being generous.
hot air
posted on 04 Jul 2009The story unfolds as a mentally ill professor (Val Kilmer) confesses to a newspaperman and later a detective, that he's holding a group of men and women hostage in a steam room; they were lured there with the offer of a dating service, and now the hot steam will slowly kill them by dissolving their lungs if the professor's theories about global warming are not printed in the paper. We're not entirely sure if these victims are being held, if they're already dead, or if Val Kilmer's character is merely delusional; unfortunately, in confusing our understanding of reality and the passage of time, the film altogether removes us from the feeling of suspense.Presumably the intent is to show how social constraints and civilized behavior will collapse into chaos under pressure, since the victims all become infantile and turn on each other in flashbacks. In this case however the pressure seems pretty damn mild - the victims are sweating in a steam room from the very beginning, so all they can really do is sweat more. We add a little more steam, and they pant. Now they look tired. They make tortured faces at each other, quietly lamenting a lack of iced tea. But since the scenes are intercut with police interviews outside, we lose the feeling of claustrophobia, and the conflict between the victims seems inexplicable; it's implied they've already been compromised by their own neuroses but we haven't seen enough of these characters to mark their descent - all we see are silly histrionics. Just as annoying, the film relies on the stereotype of Italian-Americans as insensitive mobster-types; roughly sketched in the cretinoid detective, this crystallizes completely when an imprisoned restaurateur instantly transforms to a misogynistic brute, calling each woman a 'b*tch" and just attacking someone. He tries to escape by smashing the locked door and you'd think this action would be welcome, but for unknown reasons it causes violence among them. One scene jumps out as especially bizarre. We hear the operatic strains of 'comrades being slain on the battlefield' music as the victims simply look at each other in desperation for more than five full minutes, in slow-motion. At the end of this montage, one woman just stands up and cuts her own throat with a shard of glass. She could no longer endure the agony of waiting in the sauna.The conclusion attempts to outline some relationship that Kilmer has with another mad, diabolical doctor as an accomplice. I'm not sure why, and I'll abstain from offering any interpretation of this conclusion, since it struck me as utterly nonsensical.
Val Kilmer lets off some steam.
posted on 07 May 2009There are some people who I will watch, regardless of their eclectic roles and choices. Val Kilmer is one of those people, which is how I found myself watching this strange little movie.Kilmer plays a man who walks into a newspaper office and states that he is holding 6 people in a steam room and that if he does not get the headline printed that he wants (concerning the effects of global warming on the planet, something that will prove catastrophic to us as soon as 2012 according to Kilmer) then those people will have a very unpleasant time for a couple of hours before their eventual demise.It's up to cop Armand Assante to figure out if Kilmer is actually telling the truth or simply going along with a major delusion. Meanwhile, 6 people (including Eric Roberts and Patrick Muldoon) start to get increasingly uncomfortable as the temperature rises.Fans of the Saw movies should find something appealing here due to the rather simple concept of the 6 people who may or may be trapped in the place where they have been scheduled to die. The movie does a good job of making you feel uncomfortably hot along with the protagonists, all orange-red filters and hazy camera-work at times.Sadly, although things unfold in a way that keep you guessing as to the final outcome nothing is really that interesting or gripping enough to get you caring for the revelations you know are due before the end of the movie. Kilmer, all tics and twitches, is as watchable as ever and Eric Roberts is very good but the rest of the cast are either instantly forgettable or sadly miscast (although I must say that I NEVER really find Armand Assante to be the right person for any role excepting his comedic turn in Fatal Instinct).Not a terrible movie but I suspect that most people will watch it and feel either terribly disappointed or simply ambivalent about the whole thing.See this if you like: Saw V, Cube, Captivity.
Val vs Steam Room
posted on 05 May 2009Unfortunately, this movie is a fail. Especially unfortunately because Val Kilmer acted awesome. This movie is separated on two parts - first happened in interview room where Kilmer is interrogated by Assante and second happened in the same time in the steam room between six other people. And as much I enjoyed really good Kilmer\Assante scenes as much I disliked steam room. Except cute steam effect and and yellow color of screen all rest there was very predictable for this genre - screaming, yelling and everybody went crazy one by one as usual. Boredom. And Eric Robert unfortunately dissolved among nameless actors there. Combining it with pretty ambiguous plot with very dissatisfying twist plot in the end this movie really hasn't a chance. Val Kilmer couldn't save it.
A game cast makes the confused plot worth seeing
posted on 07 Apr 2009Confused and confusing story of a deranged Val Kilmer setting up an experiment that global warming will lead to madness by locking six people in a steam room. Armand Assante is the cop trying to get to the bottom if it all. Middle of the road movie with a good cast, even if Kilmer's performance is a bit too "twitchy". Its nice to see a bunch of actors trying to sell the odd material they've been handed. The problem is that the film thinks the confused plot and trippy visuals will make up for the central story that seems to be lacking in real explanation. I'm more disappointed than anything else, especially with the ending that seems to come out of a Dr Mabuse movie. Chaos is right. Worth a look for the actors if you're so inclined.
Come on guys - watch the ending more closely
posted on 22 Mar 2009The ending is neither confusing or Dr Mabusian - just one that has been used before. I saw it coming when the Psych staff arrived. Notice that at least three of the people at the mental hospital - the woman who comes to get him, the doctor and his wife - are the same people who were supposedly in the steam room. That makes the ending quite clear. Val is having another hallucination. He has used people that he knows from the mental hospital as characters in his Chaos scenario. The 'human chaos' that the doctor refers to is that residing in Kilmer himself. A very stylish film with an excellent cast. Only real problem is that the violence was gratuitous. They could have implied rather than show the more gruesome things.
Chaos
posted on 27 Aug 2009I rent DVD's to pass the time on airplanes. Sadly, staring out at the clouds would have been better entertainment than this. I am not the best movie critic....I don't want to have to go back to college to figure out what a movie is about. In this Chaos, I didn't know if I was watching a psycho describe an event in real time, a past event, or a delusion that was only in his mind. This reminds me of Jacob's Ladder.....you never really knew what you were watching. The slow motion scenes in the spa were disjointed, and painfully slow to get through. If there was any sense at all of hot, sweaty panic, it was lost with the switching back to a particularly unappealing Val Kilmer sitting at an empty table staring into space. Finally, the ending was exactly the sort of finish I hate. You can guess and make presumptions, but you really have absolutely no idea what you just watched.