A woman’s dark and terrifying past confronts her in the most benevolent of ways, in “Shut In”. Naomi Watts stars as Mary Portman, a child psychologist who’s life is changed for the worst one night when a horrific accident takes the life of her husband (David Cubitt), and leaves her son (Charlie Heaton) paralyzed. After the dust has settled, one of Mary’s patients Tom (Jacob Tremblay) goes missing, and is ultimately presumed dead. Over the following nights, Mary becomes convinced that Tom’s ghost is haunting her and her bedridden son, bringing out a daily occurance of strange phenomena, and a confrontation with her past that will have her facing her deepest fears. “Shut In” is directed by Farren Blackburn, and is rated PG-13 for terror and some violence/bloody images, brief nudity, thematic elements and brief adult language.
“Shut In” finds itself paralyzed much like one of its lead characters, by the overwhelming nature of choices selected to make this movie so many things which it obviously is not. At the end of the day, this isn’t a psychological thriller or a horror slasher, it’s a Lifetime Television attempt at those things that fail because of its cheaply telegraphed thrills that always miss their mark. When a movie has you bored and reaching for your watch within the first half hour of the film, you MUST speed up the pacing by crafting some backstory exposition or some question answering from the plot synopsis that raises more questions than it rightfully should this early in development. There’s a lot of grasping at any kind of straws to produce a movie warranted of having a big screen debut, but this is just the latest in a year full of cheap thrills plots that produce little to nothing that is ever memorable. “Shut In” would find itself more comfortable in the back of a rotting video store. At least then it’s sure to be seen by more people than it will be in its brief two week release before disappearing from silver screens forever.
As far as cliches go, this one has it all. Poorly telegraphed jump scares….CHECK, overabundance of dream sequences….CHECK, characters making logic defying decisions…..CHECK. If this movie serves as anything, it’s an instructional video on what NOT to do in 21st filmmaking. By now these kinds of things spoofs have spoofs, so to see this presented as a straight-laced story feels anything but authentic. There’s a solid idea here to place this story in the isolated location between a snow storm and miles away from any kind of neighbor or authority. I dig that direction in any kind of film, but the movie’s production team does nothing to accentuate this scenario or even give us the audience anything to hang our hats on for what’s keeping our characters so secluded. During the final chase sequence, snow never looks like it even happened, as much of the sidewalks and walkways have spoiling evidence in footprints that are so easily seen. The best parts of movies like “Storm of the Century” or “The Shining” is that the claustrophobia plays tricks on the mentality of our characters by forcing them to spend time with their gravest fears. Not here however, as the characters weave inside and out through what is described as the biggest storm of the year. A single serving of the illogical that this film gave me.
The acting is kind of disappointing in everybody but Watts. She gives what can be described as a very chilling walk between her past and present, and living with the kinds of regrets that such events have left her as. She very much finds her life in a paused position, forbidden from moving forward because of the daily reminder that she is burdened with from her son’s new position on life. This forced me to have great empathy for her character, but never did anything to further this arc in the direction of substantial backstory. Everything is played in the present day, and I think that is a real mistake when it comes to the major twist that this movie entails. More on that later. The real disappointment with the performances comes in Jacob Tremblay who has been falling fast since his Oscar worthy turn in 2015’s “Room”. Like “Before I Sleep”, Tremblay once again is wasted in favor of using him as purely a visual chill for facial reactions and details. This is a shame because I feel that Tremblay is wise above his years in presenting authentic child performances that chill you to the core, and this movie simply doesn’t have anything to compliment him on, and it’s a real shame as child acting isn’t something that should be under-appreciated or underwhelmed.
I mentioned earlier a twist that happens midway through this movie, and I still don’t fully understand how I feel about this. On one hand, everything is changed dramatically in tone and composition from here on out, crafting a design of bat-shit crazy that is enjoyable in the same light as a film like “When the Bough Breaks”. But on the other hand, the twist makes absolutely no sense what so ever when you consider the aspects of what we went through to get there. I won’t spoil it for the readers, but for this reveal to make any sense, the news on live television would’ve had to be manipulated, and one of our main characters has to a time traveler that even Christopher Lambert could be proud of. I was aghast at just how little care or concern was put into this script that never worried about how logically shallow their structuring was. It feels like the writers typed out the plain cheese of a modern day horror story and then didn’t do a re-draft afterwards to correct some of the nagging glares in continuity. The twist is made even worse because it happens with about thirty-five minutes to go in the movie, and the film just kind of drowns on from there, stuffing us with scene after scene of illogical action that will make you scratch your head at how this movie tried to play one of these characters off as a genius before more was discovered about them.
“Shut In” tortures its audience through three acts of inconsistencies that never add up or amount to anything other than the buffet of cliches that you can play horror bingo with. With the exception of Watts dedicated performance, as well as its compact setting that at least attempts to set the mood, this movie failed on every range of the spectrum for anything that was even remotely chilling. Shut this one in a dark and deserted room and make sure it never gets out to the public again.
3/10