All The Empty Rooms | Official Trailer | Netflix
There's a quiet brutality to this short documentary. It's not loud. It doesn't shout. And that's kind of the point.
Joshua Seftel follows photographer Lou Bopp (movies and tv series) and CBS correspondent Steve Hartman (movies and tv series) across a seven-year project that photographs the childhood bedrooms of kids killed in school shootings. The film runs about thirty-three minutes, and in that time it asks for silence, attention, and a willingness to sit with absence.
What it feels like
Think about it this way: you walk into a room frozen in the middle of someone's life. Toys still on the floor. Posters on the wall. A lamp that will never be switched on again. The camera lingers on those details. The photography is the movie's backbone. And it works - because the stillness forces you to imagine the person who should be in that room.
Here's what I mean. The film isn't piling on statistics or rallying cries. It's a human exercise in memory. And that restraint can be more devastating than any screaming headline. The soundtrack - spare, careful - helps. The editing gives each room space to breathe. You leave with the sensation of having visited a series of small, private memorials.
What works
- Photography: Lou Bopp's images are precise and patient. They invite you to notice things you might otherwise miss.
- Tone: Seftel resists sensationalism. There's dignity here, and a refusal to exploit pain for shock.
- Focus on detail: The film trusts small moments - a skateboard, a stuffed animal, a sneaker - to carry emotional weight.
What doesn't always land
- It's short. Sometimes I wanted more context. More voices. More time to sit with some of the families beyond the images.
- It's deliberately narrow in scope. If you're looking for policy, causes, or a broader investigation into gun violence, this isn't that film. Maybe that's fine. Maybe it's frustrating. I'm not sure, but both reactions feel valid.
And look - you're not meant to come away with answers. You're meant to come away with faces, rooms, and a sense of who's been lost. That's a deliberate choice. I think it's an honest one.
Why watch it
If you want a film that hushes you into paying attention, this is it. If you want raw reporting or polemics, look elsewhere. But if you want to be reminded of the human scale behind headlines, to see how absence looks in a bedroom, to feel the smallness and vastness of grief at once - this short documentary hits that mark.
There are moments that linger. A photograph you can't unsee. A line from someone who loved the child. And you'll walk away carrying that image with you, which is precisely the point.
Bottom line: All The Empty Rooms | Official Trailer | Netflix is a restrained, humane film that trusts quiet images over spectacle. It's powerful because it chooses to mourn rather than to argue - and sometimes mourning is its own kind of truth.
