The Room Next Door: Plot, Cast & Critics Reviews (2024)

There’s something quietly radical about two friends sharing a quiet room while one of them decides to die. Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, turns that intimate premise into a meditation on mortality, friendship, and the choices we make at the end.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar ·
Release Year: 2024 ·
Lead Actors: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton ·
Language: English ·
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79% (112 reviews) ·
Genre: Drama

The film’s factual record builds from multiple verified sources.

The implication: most data points agree within a narrow margin, giving viewers a reliable factual baseline.

What is the plot of The Room Next Door?

The film opens with Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a writer living in a Manhattan apartment, reconnecting with an old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) after years apart. Martha has terminal cervical cancer and has decided to end her life on her own terms using a euthanasia pill she obtained. She asks Ingrid to stay in the room next door during the act, and to use a simple signal: an open door means Martha is still alive; a closed door means she has died (Spokane Public Radio).

The story unfolds largely in a rented house in upstate New York, where the two women talk, walk, and confront their shared past. Flashbacks reveal Martha’s father who served in Vietnam, her time with a Carmelite priest in Iraq, and the estrangement from her own daughter. Almodóvar paints the friendship in rich, color-coded interiors – reds, greens, blues – designed by production designer Inbal Weinberg (IONCINEMA). The plot is less about action than about the emotional weight of waiting and witnessing.

The pattern: Almodóvar uses physical distance to dramatize emotional proximity, a technique that rewards patient viewers.

Is The Room Next Door based on a true story or a book?

The film is adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through (End of Life Choices CA). Almodóvar wrote the screenplay himself, his first English-language script. The novel is a work of fiction, though it draws on real debates about assisted dying. The film is not based on a specific true story, but the themes – terminal illness, friendship, and the ethics of euthanasia – are grounded in real-world conversations.

Critics have noted that Almodóvar softened the novel’s more ambiguous ending, giving the film a clearer emotional resolution. The core premise – a woman asking a friend to stay in the next room while she dies – is original to Nunez’s story. There is no known real-life analogue, though end-of-life doulas and hospice programs sometimes use similar arrangements.

What this means: the film adapts fiction, yet its emotional architecture mirrors real end-of-life care practices.

Is The Room Next Door a queer film?

The film is directed by openly gay filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and features strong queer subtext, even though it does not center on a romantic relationship. Critics at Them (LGBTQ+ culture outlet) have described the film as built on a “queer framework of care and mortality,” emphasizing chosen family over biological ties. The intense bond between Ingrid and Martha, while platonic, carries emotional depth that many queer viewers recognize as a form of intimate partnership.

Almodóvar has long explored non-traditional relationships – All About My Mother, Pain and Glory – and here he extends that lens to the end of life. The film’s queerness is not in its plot but in its values: autonomy over one’s body, solidarity among friends, and the rejection of conventional family structures in favor of self-determined care.

The implication: the film’s queerness lies in its ethics, not its romance, making it a subtle but significant contribution to queer cinema.

Is The Room Next Door worth watching?

Critical reception and audience reviews

• The film holds a 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 112 reviews (IONCINEMA).
• IMDb users gave it a 6.5/10 (about 8,000 ratings).
• Dan Webster of Spokane Public Radio called it “colorful fantasy reassuring about death” but noted it lacks Almodóvar’s usual madcap energy.
• The Guardian (UK newspaper) described it as “extravagant and engrossing” with standout performances from Moore and Swinton.

Comparison with other Almodóvar films

Three key differences set The Room Next Door apart from earlier Almodóvar work:

• First film entirely in English – some critics felt the dialogue loses his usual rhythm.
• More restrained, less melodramatic – fewer plot twists, more interiority.
• Directly tackles assisted dying, a theme he approached tangentially in The Skin I Live In and Pain and Glory.

What the ending means for the story

After a long day of waiting, Ingrid finds Martha’s door closed. She discovers Martha has died peacefully. The final scene shows Ingrid walking out of the house alone, but she stops to notice a butterfly – a subtle symbol of transformation. The ending suggests that Martha’s choice, while painful, allowed her to retain agency and that Ingrid’s role as witness was a form of love. The film does not take a stance on euthanasia itself but insists on the right to choose a “good death” with dignity.

The pattern: the film’s virtues and drawbacks are two sides of the same coin – it asks for patience and rewards it.

Where can I watch The Room Next Door?

As of early 2025, the film is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play. It is not currently streaming on Netflix (Kids-In-Mind).

A Blu-ray release is scheduled for early 2025. Theatrical screenings have largely ended in most markets, though some independent cinemas still show it. Check local listings for availability. For those outside the US, digital availability varies by region; many European countries have the film on Amazon Prime Video as a rental.

The catch: streaming access remains fragmented, so viewers may need to rent or buy digitally.

What critics are saying (selected quotes)

“Extravagant and engrossing … Moore and Swinton give standout performances that anchor the film’s emotional weight.”

— The Guardian (UK newspaper)

“The film operates within a queer framework of care and mortality, where friendship becomes the central relationship worth fighting for.”

— Them (LGBTQ+ culture outlet)

“A colorful fantasy reassuring about death, relationships, and creativity – even if it lacks Almodóvar’s usual madcap flair.”

— Dan Webster, Spokane Public Radio

“The film’s sumptuous color design and quiet pacing make it a meditative experience about what it means to accompany someone to the end.”

— Sarah G. Vincent Views

For viewers drawn to slow, emotionally rich dramas that respect the complexity of death with dignity, The Room Next Door is a genuinely moving film. Its greatest achievement may be in showing that the most radical act of love can be simply staying in the next room. For audiences in the US and UK who value character over plot, the decision to watch is easy. For those seeking fast entertainment or a clear political stance on euthanasia, Almodóvar offers neither – only a quiet, gorgeously lit room where two friends face the hardest conversation of their lives. The implication is that, in that room, we all have something to learn. Swinton and Moore make that lesson unforgettable.