By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Farren Blackburn
Cast: Naomi Watts, Charlie Heaton, Jacob Tremblay, David Cubitt, Crystal Balint and Oliver Platt.
Rating: Poor.
Another thriller hits the theaters and it’s “Shut In” and unfortunately the results are not fulfilling.
The movie tells the story of Mary Portman (Naomi Watts) a child psychologist who ends up being a widow after her husband dies in a car accident which involves his stepson Stephen (Charlie Heaton) who ends up paralyzed.
Now she lives in an isolated New England home with his stepson who she know takes care of him. Everything will change for Mary when she knows Tom (Jacob Tremblay) a mute boy who has dark secrets.
She decides to invite him home but a serious of strange events begin to happen with the presence of Tom which will lead her to believe that someone is trying to harm her.
Now she will try to find out the origins of what is going on in her house before it’s too late.
For being a thriller, “Shut In” is a very slow film and for this type of genres you need to have a solid pace. It over explains and gives ton of information to the audience that I felt alienated by moments.
The direction by Farren Blackburn, who’s most notable work is in Television Series that include Netflix’s “Daredevil”, “Doctor Who” and “Luther” but this time his directing didn’t work and the film was poorly executed.
The script by newcomer Christina Hodson was too predictable, cheezy and there were moments were I saw Naomi Watts performance to over the top and I didn’t believe her at any moment.
I felt the movie was a complete carbon copy of “The Shining”, one of the greatest horror masterpieces of all time but this was not even close.
I understand that as filmmakers we are inspired but at the same time there is a tendency of copying movies that cannot be executed and this was the case here.
This film had the potiential of being an interesting psychological thriller but the main problems were the writing and the directing that didn’t work at any level possible.
I have an enourmous respect to Naomi Watts who has given memorable performances in movies like “21 Grams” and “The Impossible” where she scored Academy Award Nominations in both performances but her performance here I didn’t buy it.
In a positive note it was really good seeing Jacob Tremblay, who gave a memorable performance in last year’s “Room” which literally launched his career and hopefully we can see from him more in the future.
Hope this can be a learning lesson from both Farren Blackburn and Christina Hodson and hopefully their next project can turn into a better result.
“Shut In” is one of the worst thrillers I’ve seen this year and in a while and I cannot recommend it for the elements that were previously mentioned.