A One Mann’s Movies review of “All The Empty Rooms”. (2025, 5*, 12A).
At this point prior to the Oscars ceremony, I would normally post a combined review of all of the pictures in the Documentary Short category. However, sadly, this year I seem to be stymied with all but “All The Empty Rooms” unavailable to me due to them either not being available to watch in the UK, or being on a streaming service I don’t want to fork out a lot of money on just to watch a single short!
So, this one, available on Netflix, is the only one that I am able to rate this year. But to be honest, it’s such a doozy that I think there is a very strong possibility that it will win tonight, to the point that I have actually put my traditional £5 bet on it to win, despite the others being sight-unseen.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
A CBS news correspondence undertakes a personal project to photographically document the preserved bedrooms of US school shooting victims.
Certification:
UK: NR; US: PG-13. (This short has not been rated by the BBFC, but I would estimate it to be a 12A. There is one use of bad language and, of course, emotionally distressing scenes relating to bereavement.)
Talent:
Starring: Steve Hartman, Lou Bopp.
Directed by: Joshua Seftel.
Running Time: 34m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Emotionally devastating study of the grief left behind.
- Delicately and beautifully filmed.
- A real call-to-action for American citizens.
Negatives:
- It’s not a happy watch, but apart from that… nothing.
Full Review of “All The Empty Rooms”:
The unwashed clothes.
From the outset it seems that this practice of leaving a dead child’s room exactly as it was since the moment they were last in it seems to be very common. As a parent, how could you not do that? And once you start doing that, at what point could you or should you stop? One year? Five years? Never?
The film starts with an emotional punch in visiting the former home of Dominic, killed in a school shooting 5 years earlier but whose room is still as it was, even down to his dirty washing in the washing basket. As his father says, he “didn’t want to lose the smell in his room because it’s distinctly him”.
A man on a mission.
The man behind this 7 year project is CBS news reporter Steve Hartman, who was always the face of the human-interest happy segment at the end of a tough news day (in the UK, this was always known as the “And Finally” segment, as read by Trevor MacDonald on ITV’s “News At Ten”). But it got to the point in 1997 where he couldn’t put a positive spin on kids being gunned down at school: he said that he was “whitewashing” it. Since then, school shootings have risen from 17 per year to 132 per year… shocking.
Three ‘final’ bedrooms to document.
We follow Steve and his photographer Lou Bopp on the ‘final’ three bedrooms to photograph. (Of course, ‘final’ is in rabbit ears, since even as we see Steve in a hotel room on one of these trips, there is a report of another school shooting on the TV.) These three victims are:
- Hallie Scruggs, aged 9, of Nashville, killed in the Covenant School shooting of May 27th 2023;
- Jackie Cazares, aged 9, of Texas, killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting of May 24th 2022; and
- Gracie Muehlberger, aged 15, of Santa Clarita, killed in the Saugus High School shooting of November 14th 2019.
All of these visits cut like a knife to watch.
For Hallie, there’s her ‘blankie’, still on the bed, that her mother goes to smell on a daily basis.
For Jackie, two of the stuffed bears on the bed play her voice when the paw is pressed; the sound recorded from her playing with her dogs only a short time before she was killed. She wanted to be a vet.
Gracie had written “Dear future self” messages and stored them in a box on her bedside table. Her father reads one, voice cracking, about her going to college: something she would never get to do. Her father says “As long as this room exists, she exists”.
Most terribly of all, the Muehlberger’s doorbell camera shows Gracie locking the door and going to school, with that fateful date – 11/14/2019 – in the corner of the footage. Gut-wrenching.
They treasure their own kids.
Both Steve and Lou have their own kids back home, and we see how this very personal project has made them treasure them all the more. Lou has a tradition of taking his daughter Rose’s picture every morning before she goes to school, creating an impressive animation of her growing up to the beautiful young woman she is now.
(Steve and Lou putting their kids in this documentary, and disclosing their names, did make me feel just a little bit nervous for their safety. I’m sure there will be some pro-gun-nuts who object to this film’s success. And some nuts might be nuttier than others.)
Closing remarks.
Although Hartman carried out the project as a personal mission, in his own time and behind his employer’s back, CBS to their credit made a feature out of it. The film ends with him in a CBS studio about to go live to introduce the piece. Steve’s closing words are powerful:
“I wish that we could transport all Americans to be standing in one of those bedrooms for just a few minutes. It would be a different America.”
Yet the film is to be praised for not shoving a “you should do this with the gun laws” message down the viewers throats. It simply lets the pictures do the talking.
Summary Thoughts:
A truly powerful short film that every American should carve out 30 minutes to watch. The film is dedicated to all of the children killed in school shootings since Columbine, as the screen fills with names in small-typeface. The call to action should be obvious to all.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhpJ8INsR0g.
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