Little "bravery" in making this film
If the film were about a man who kept a grown woman locked in his basement, would that be "brave"? Oh...wait..."Room" had a woman AND a little boy locked up in a cell.
Since this film has a boy, and NO woman, the reviews and descriptions are all about this man being a "pedophile".
A pedophile is not more likely to lock children in his/her basement than a heterosexual man/woman is.
Isn't the fact that he's got a human being LOCKED IN HIS HOUSE the worst thing about this man? It's got little to do with him being a pedophile. This is not "normal pedophile behavior".
Pedophiles are people who are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. They are not rapists, nor are they even "child molesters" necessarily. I have two pedophiles in my family and one very old friend, who did not molest me, who is attracted to younger and middle teenage boys, not little boys. He's what's called a "hebephile/ephebophile" These people are not monsters, they are some of greatest people I've ever known.
One of the pedophiles in the family is celibate, and the other is married and does not molest children, mainly because we are aware of his condition and he knows not to be alone with children.
My old friend messed around with some friends of mine, but to them, he's just "an older gay man" and he never did anything they didn't want to do. He'd be in prison these days for things he did when we were younger, but because now he's legally allowed to screw 18-year-olds, and in some states 16 year-olds, he's okay with leaving the 13-15 year-olds he used to screw alone. These are just SOME of the benefits of gay rights. Fewer 13-15 year-old boys getting laid by grown men. Poor boys.
What do we call a heterosexual man attracted to teenage girls? That's right, we call him...a heterosexual man. Some call him Mr. President.
What would be VERY brave would be for the makers of this film to remake it so that the man is NOT holding the boy captive, but living next door or a block away, with the boy a willing participant in the relationship, as many are. As disturbing as it is, it is something happening right now, in every city, and films like THIS are partly to blame.
WHY? Because as long as we demonize people with paraphilias, as long as we make them into caricatures and stereotypes, we will ignore what goes on right in front of our faces. As long as people are looking for oddballs with no social life, with a strange behavior pattern, with little resemblance to us, because we all want to be so normal and healthy, not like THEM, then these unhealthy relationships will continue unstopped. We cannot stop unhealthy relationships, however, unless we can explain what is unhealthy about it. Which I can, but few are willing to bother.