In the DVD's standard promo featurettes, co-creator Christopher Leone traces the show's concept to an old friend's eccentric idea of rudimentary objects with wildly unique powers, but the mystery and supernatural elements in The Lost Room owe a great deal to the original Twilight Zone series, particularly the episode “Little Girl Lost,” which had a child disappearing into another reality plane inside the family home, and the father's urgent rescue efforts.

In Lost Room, along with the father's search for his missing daughter (played by another Fanning moppet named Elle) is the discovery of supernatural relics (branded 'objects') linked to a forty year-old event that may or may not be tied to God – a bit of a variation on the convoluted theological quest from the The Da Vinci Code.

Add several warring factions – a religious cult; a kind of ‘alcoholics anonymous' who safeguard the so-called ‘objects' from misuse; and some colourful, self-serving ‘collectors' – and you get several narrative strands crammed into an insufficient running time. The end results are often flat characters, and film edits that appropriately assume audiences can leap along with the characters while several dialogue exchanges repeat or state the obvious in rather blatant filler scenes.

The father (Peter Krause from Six feet Under) periodically strikes up an allegiance with a villain (such as ‘The Weasel,' nicely played by Desperate Housewives meanie Roger Bart), but there are several moments when all a villain needs to do is just take the key from dad (particularly when it's right in front, for Pete's sake), or follow the father to where it's been stashed. Case in point: if Karl Kreutzfeld (played smooth and slimy by Kevin Pollak) has been sending sunglassed henchmen with guns on city streets to hunt him down, why suddenly become so completely civil? It's the old conceit of keeping the hero alive so there's a movie, and there's quite a handful in Lost Room.

Leone's concept never really settles into something definite - not quite sci-fi, a bit more supernatural that slight horror, and wobbles into conspiracy terrain – and along with abstract narrative filler and gaping pits of illogic, Lost Room should completely collapse into a pastiche of genre conceits, but every so often the series slides into a smart little groove, and becomes compelling, and quite witty.

Both assets are mostly due to a some really amusing supporting characters who enliven their episodes because they've been given two things dad lacks: a past involvement with the mysterious lost room, and an addiction to an object. (Julianna Margulies' character does share a past with the objects, but it's inferred in a singular nursing home scene that's never revisited, and we're never told how the objects nor the hotel room turn ordinary people into near-nutters, addicted to each object's strange power.)

The mere possession of a magic hotel key doesn't enliven dad's onscreen persona, but the possessor of a bus ticket that sends people to a kind of Hell and a comb that freezes time for a few sections (with some physical consequences) offer us two great characters and some very wry humour. Less effective characters include Margaret Cho as a kind of A-1 Object Finder who always manages to fulfill a character's search in spite of each object's secret nature; and April Grace, familiar from TV's Lost, whose detective character exists only to confront the cult's latest recruit at the end, and offers nothing else of worth in the series.

Originally made for the Sci-Fi Channel, The Lost Room episodes will probably be embraced by fans who prefer intrigue instead of a coherent wrap-up, and the series joins those odd little shows that explored some clever ideas, but lost their way somewhat when the myths became rather muddy and convoluted. The final episode more or less sets up the surviving characters for another round of subterfuge; with cleaner plotting, a second run at The Lost Room could fix loose plot strands and flesh out some of the weaker characters.

Maple's DVD contains 6 episodes, grouped in pairs with formal main & end titles. The transfers are clean, although the DVD's heavy compression is evident in the odd shot here and there, such as a passing car and it's jaggy diagonal outline. The Dolby 5.1 is very punchy and well-textured, and frequently throws a surprise sound effect in the discreet rear surround sound channels. Robert Kral's music score is equally well-used, with a good balance between themes, moody suspense cues, and a few bass-friendly percussion tracks.

© 2007 Mark R. Hasan