Room 104 season 2, episode 5 review: Woman in the Wall

Room 104 returns with a twisted tale of a woman suffering from unknown ailments getting sucked into a relationship with a wall.

Catherine (Dolly Wells) walks into Room 104, wearing a contamination mask. She is unwell and it is evident from her resigned movements that she has escaped to this room for some peace. Her problems have only just begun, when she suddenly hears a voice (Leonora Pitts) speaking loudly.

She thinks it’s her next-door neighbor on the phone whose voice is traveling through to her room because the walls are very thin. The motel concierge doesn’t believe her because there is no one in Room 106 but comes to check anyway. No, there is definitely no one in the next room, so who was talking through the wall?

‘I’m inside the wall’, a mysterious voice in Room 104 says. She was bored and wanted to have a conversation, so she started talking to Catherine. The invisible woman knows everything about Catherine; especially about her leaving her job recently because she can’t sit for long hours without experiencing a whole lot of pain. The woman also knows how the doctors have not found a solution to all the ailments Catherine has been suffering this past year.

Catherine thinks she’s losing her mind, but this is Room 104 – she definitely isn’t. Catherine has tried everything – therapists, doctors, yoga, acupuncture – nothing has helped her. Now she feels like she’s just ‘going away or something’. The woman in the wall says she can help Catherine by being her friend.

‘I have friends,’ Catherine retorts, but the woman asks why her friends aren’t with her. After all, wouldn’t real friends know that Catherine wouldn’t be comfortable asking them to come with her? They should have booked tickets and just been there for her.

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The woman in the wall of Room 104 wheedles her way into Catherine’s good books by flattering her and asking how a beautiful woman like Catherine doesn’t have a husband or a boyfriend? Catherine replies that while everyone else was experiencing their firsts, she has always been trying to catch up with life. Catherine feels something is wrong with her deep down, and the woman wonders if Catherine’s ailments are psychosomatic – ‘what if you aren’t really sick?’, she asks, sowing the seeds of doubt in Catherine.

We see Catherine wheeled into Room 104 – some time has passed. She’s bitter and angry because after she left Room 104, she stopped seeing doctors. The woman in the wall made her feel like her ailments were due to her being weak. Turns out, Catherine has crippling Lyme disease and by not seeing doctors she lost her ability to walk. The woman in the wall is unphased, insisting she is Catherine’s only real friend.

Another time jump: Catherine looks resplendent in a summer dress, a wide smile pinned on her face. She looks well, having recovered from the disease and now a happily married woman. Catherine has returned to Room 104 to apologize for their last meeting and to say goodbye to the woman in the wall. The woman tells her she’s sad that she will never see Catherine again. Catherine is surprised – the woman isn’t a real person, so she didn’t expect her to have such feelings.

The woman asks Catherine if she had spoken to anyone – her therapist – about her. Catherine explains that she has tried to understand all this, but she can’t so she would rather leave it as is. The woman keeps pushing her, asking her to guess who she is. She tells Catherine that she isn’t a goblin or a ghost or a figment of Catherine’s imagination – she is in fact a woman. Something terrible happened to the woman in the wall a while ago and she has been here ever since, looking for a friend. ‘A true friend, to help me… Help me believe I’m real’.

Catherine, being the bleeding heart that she is, presses her head against the wall, singing to console the unseen woman. It’s a touching moment till Catherine can’t unstick herself. Realising too late the trap she’s fallen into, Catherine cries out in vain as she is slowly, terrifyingly, melded into the wall.