I am – Hercules!! If you like “Lost” or “The 4400” or “Heroes” or “Twin Peaks” or “The Twilight Zone” or the first two seasons of “Alias,” I suspect you’ll find yourself thoroughly engrossed in “The Lost Room,” a new six-hour miniseries running on SciFi over the next three nights. It’s an exceedingly well conceived, constructed and paced tale about a motel key that can somehow fit into any door’s keyhole, and turn that door into a portal to a room that was somehow sucked outside of time and space and our reality at 1:20 p.m. on May 4, 1961. Once in the room, the keyholder can exit any door on the planet just by thinking about where he or she wants to go. It gets better. It turns out the roughly 100 ordinary objects that once occupied the room take on strange properties when they’re taken back out into our reality. There’s a coat, for example, that makes one invulnerable to bullets. There’s a plastic ballpoint that can incinerate people. There’s a radio that makes you three inches taller if you tune it to the right station. There’s a comb that allows the combed to freeze time. There’s a bus ticket that can instantaneously transport anyone to just outside Gallup, N.M. Sometimes, we’re told, when one combines some of these magical objects, they can do even more amazing things. When a Pittsburgh police detective (Peter Krause of “Sports Night” and “Six Feet Under” fame) unexpectedly comes into possession of the Lost Room’s key, he discovers people have been collecting and coveting and fighting over these objects – some of which bring their users great wealth and power – for decades. When his daughter (Elle Fanning) accidentally becomes trapped by the room, his quest to get to the bottom of all the weirdness becomes that much more compelling. The complex but highly accessible script, by someone named Laura Harkcom and veteran digital effects artist Christopher Leone (with somebody named Paul Workman contributing to the story but not the teleplay), is exceedingly clever in how it imagines these objects have affected people, events and the world over the past 45 years. And the writers have devised an interesting and weirdly logical set of rules for how the Lost Room works. The cast is one of the best ever gathered by SciFi for one of its originals. Aside from Krause and Fanning, there are memorable turns contributed by Kevin Pollak (“A Few Good Men”) as a menacing millionaire, Dennis Christopher (“Breaking Away”) as a forensics investigator who allows himself to get sucked into the dark side of the Lost Room’s world, comedian Margaret Cho (“All-American Girl”) as a tracker of the lost room objects, Peter Jacobson (“In Justice”) as the bus-ticket holder, Ewen Bremner (“Trainspotting”) as Harold the very dizzy comb guy, Chris Bauer (“The Wire”) as Krause’s partner and Roger Bart (“The Stepford Wives”) as a mercenary object hunter dubbed “The Weasel.” I don’t know how it happened (a better exercise regime? an effective hair straightener?), but Julianna Margulies – whose character is keen to rid our world of all the room’s objects - is somehow hotter now at 40 than she was as a twentysomething ER nurse 12 years ago. I found the series’ first two nights brainy, exciting, scary, moving, full of incident and even quite funny at junctures. Its story is dense, but agreeably so if one pays attention, and I’m very much looking forward to the conclusion SciFi did not forward to the Ain't It Cool offices. Four stars. But what matters Herc’s opinion? Variety says:

…Strange and clever, "The Lost Room" is full of winding corridors, peculiar twists and wry, oddball humor, set against a mystery that recalls TV's better Stephen King productions -- before, that is, they invariably fell apart in the last act. Building on Sci Fi's success with such fare as "The 4400" and "The Triangle," this well-cast project creates a dense world of "object hunters" that should tap directly into the basic cabler's geekazoid base, helping them to fill this relatively barren TV period by booking a three-night stay. … think of "The Lost Room" as a relatively low-key affair that should inspire most of the audience checking it out to stay checked in.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… two things happen that really shouldn't because the character is too smart. But if they don't, there is no miniseries. First, Miller gets the motel key and, rather than put it in an evidence room or somewhere else for safekeeping, takes it home with him. Second, he leaves the key out where his young daughter can play with it and, of course, vanish into the mystery motel room or somewhere. … Directing credits are shared by Craig R. Baxley (Nights 1 and 3) and Michael Watkins (Night 2). They maintain a consistent tone and pace, creating a world that is more puzzling and fascinating than scary.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B” and says:

… A large part of the fun is watching Miller learn to maneuver through this new, weird world, fathering clues that will bring back his daughter – it’s like Riven meets Lord of the Rings … Had the writers stayed true to their mythology, this miniseries would have been absolutely stunning. As it is, it’s still pretty great. …

TV Guide says:

… an especially silly descent into incoherence. Peter Krause keeps a straight face as the bland hero of this mystery/fantasy, in which a motel-room key opens onto a room that takes you anywhere (and that swallows his daughter). The key is one of many magical everyday objects being sought by members of cabals named the Order and the Legion. It's as ridiculously dense as latter-day Alias, but not as much fun. …

The New York Times says:

… beguiling … Why the phantoms of that era (with their Watergate comb-overs, heavy-framed glasses and perpetual highballs) scare us so much, and why now, is up to cultural historians to decide. For now, though, they make fine ghosts in a sci-fi series, and in Peter Krause they meet their modern-day match.

The Los Angeles Times says:

… a long ride to nowhere but with some nice scenery and exciting turns along the way. If ultimately frustrating and fickle as regards even its own invented rules of supernatural physics, taken simply as a thing to watch, it's pretty enjoyable. Indeed, that is almost the definition of a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries. … In the end, nothing — or nothing much — is revealed. Krause's particular story does resolve — that is, the question of whether he'll get his daughter back. (But I think you already know the answer to that one.) Ultimately, there is no more explanation of how the room got lost or why a comb should be able to stop time, for example, than how those beans Jack traded the cow for got to be magic. This feels like a bit of a cheat, given the investment of time, and yet there's something honest about it as well: Any explanation would be as arbitrary as the rest of it.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says:

…The tale's beyond complicated, to be sure. But it also may be the most watchable six hours of strangeness you'll see this season. "The Lost Room" deserves credit for its twisty and, at times, humorous take on classic American sci-fi storytelling, if nothing else. …

9 p.m. Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday. SciFi.

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