Instead, the movie delivers a rote, climactic chase through Mary’s rural home, relying on circumstantial timing. Shut In seeks to emulate the anxiety of balancing grief with caring for a child that was done so successfully in The Babadook, but it lacks any sense of growing dread-much less the threat of danger-until its final, predictable act.Įven after the plot makes a sleazy pivot, Shut In lacks the conviction to allow that B-movie element to run its course. Clangs on the soundtrack attempt to create tension where none exists. (He continues to appear in her dreams.) As Mary loses sleep, her paranoia worsens, yet Christina Hodson’s monotonous script fails to make Mary’s psychological struggles feel any more severe than a case of misplaced keys.Ĭreaks on the stairs lead Mary to believe something is inside the house, haunting her and Stephen: Shut In runs through every clichéd horror fake-out, from elaborate nightmare sequences to raccoons suddenly emerging from a trashcan. She grows increasingly concerned when one of her young patients goes missing. Watts plays Mary Portman, a widowed child psychologist caring for her paralyzed 18-year-old stepson, Stephen ( Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton). A EuropaCorp release.Aside from featuring Naomi Watts in its lead role, there’s little that separates the “edge of sleep” thriller Shut In from a weak made-for-TV melodrama. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for terror and some violence/bloody images, nudity, thematic elements and brief strong languageĬast: Naomi Watts, Charlie Heaton, Oliver Platt, Jacob TremblayĬredits:Directed by Farren Blackburn, script by Christina Hodson. The fact that it’s a bit of a hash means we never, for one second, buy into anything supernatural, means we are several steps ahead of our heroine from start to finish. Even if it was perfectly executed, this was never going to surprise. It’s the sort of movie where you understand every character, his or her function and their fate the first time you meet them. Most every other scare is manufactured and fake. The film’s best fright comes via Skype - something Dr. Mary’s frantic online sessions with her shrink earn scientific explanations and dismissals.īut someone, or something, is in the house with her and means to do her harm. And that’s when the weird noises in the house and her nightmares begin. Her efforts to resolve this send the kid fleeing into the wintry night. Then, as a winter storm approaches, Tom escapes from his parents and breaks into Mary’s SUV. Mary thinks he’s save-able, but his mom is moving him elsewhere. Tom, a deaf nine-year old patient (Jacob Tremblay) has some of Stephen’s tendencies. “You can’t save every child in Maine,” her assistant burbles in her Not-a-Mainer accent. Wilson ( Oliver Platt) agrees, via Facetime, that this might be the right thing to do. She’s overwhelmed and depressed by that and ready to place him somewhere else. The accident left him paralyzed and catatonic, and Mary is his sole caregiver. Stephen is a violent kid with impulse control issues. She’s just lost her husband in a car wreck on his way to take his son ( Charlie Heaton) to an institution. It was cheaper to film in Quebec and that’s that. Pay no attention to the assistant and patients with French accents. Watts plays Mary, a child psychologist in suburban Maine. But they had the bare bones to build a passable if routine thriller here, if they’d known what they were doing. The team making “Shut In” had the Oscar-nominated star of “The Ring,” Naomi Watts, a big, creepy violent kids, a remote, old and creaky house isolated by a winter storm and menace from spooky things she cannot rationally believe.Īnd it doesn’t work.
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