Torture Room 2007

A battered Arab man named Jahan Sufi, Ahmed Lucan, is subjected to brutal torture as spikes hammer into his arms, and when pressed for names, he blurts out Anoush Karagozian. Anoush Karagozian, Lena Bookall, is a cocktail waitress of mixed French and Armenian descent who works in Los Angeles. Government operatives abduct Anoush and interrogate her about the “ragheads” in her life, including her boss, Reza Bayoul, Kaled Shakta; her ex-fiancé Jahan Sufi; and her current boyfriend, Shazad Mohamaed Sousa. After being made to sign a contract that obliges her to serve the interests of the United States government, Anoush is sedated and taken to a black site overseen by a man known only as Mr. Green John Forgeham.

Inside the facility, Anoush and the other detainees are subjected to a harrowing battery of tortures designed to break will and memory. The methods are relentless: constant noise that gnaws at concentration, forced consumption of raw meat and even a pig’s head washed down with toilet water, relentless psychic driving, a mock execution, and electric shocks that sear through nerve and resolve. The captors show her violent, abstract footage of war crimes and Nazi experiments while she is heavily drugged, and the experience is punctuated by shocking personal violation—one of her nipples is sliced off—along with staged rescues and days spent in a sealed box, left to wallow in excrement while hooked up to IVs. The scene is made more disorienting by the presence of a figure who pushes for ever harsher acts.

One of Anoush’s most disturbing confrontations comes when Mr. Green tries to coerce her into killing Jahan. When she refuses, the pressure intensifies and later shifts toward a different, even more dangerous target: a serial rapist, killer, and implied cannibal named Ron. Ron, William Tempel and Anoush are locked in a cell together and starved; when Ron finally loses control and beats her, Anoush uses strips of her own clothing to hogtie and strangle him, a grim act that earns Mr. Green’s quiet approval.

With the pressure escalating, Mr. Green moves Anoush into his office and subjects her to a brutal gaslighting campaign. She is made to eat dog food while fake documents try to convince her she is actually a U.S. intelligence agent named “Sharon” who enemy combatants have brainwashed into thinking she is Anoush Karagozian. The tests reach a chilling climax as Mr. Green coerces her into performing the ultimate betrayal of someone she loves by forcing her to shoot her own mother. When Anoush, overwhelmed by despair, attempts suicide and survives, Mr. Green greets the outcome with cold satisfaction: “You did it, Sharon. You killed the thing you love. And you were willing to die for us too.”

Eventually, a pair of agents releases Anoush and arranges for her to be struck by a car as a calculated cover for her injuries, then leaves her with a special cellphone to keep in contact with Mr. Green. The film closes with Anoush huddled in a fetal position, mindlessly repeating random words, and she calls Mr. Green to report that Shazad has plans to meet with friends visiting from Lebanon, leaving the fate of her future hanging in a fragile balance.