Should you watch this if it’s free? OK.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? No.
Score: 2.0/5
Secret ending? No.
Running time: 91 minutes (~1.5 hours)
“Shut In” is a horror thriller about a psychologist and her paralysed teenage stepson, who live alone. After treating a 9-year-old boy at work, strange things begin to happen. It stars Naomi Watts (Mary Portman), Oliver Platt (Dr Wilson), Charlie Heaton (Steven Portman), and Jacob Tremblay (Tom Patterson).
“Shut In” feels like the perfect premise for a horror movie, if not for the fact that, well, they’re not really all that shut in. Premise aside, it feels more like a soap opera than anything else, showing us the trials and tribulations of a single parent who struggles to find meaningful relationships and help her patients, who just so happens to be in a scary situation. It then morphs into a horror film. This lack of focus makes it hard to understand just exactly what “Shut In” is trying to achieve. Are you supposed to be frightened, are you supposed to understand what a single mother’s life is like, or are you supposed to be frightened by a single mother’s life?
Highlights
Naomi Watts’s quiet strength
Even though we have Jacob Tremblay (who plays Tom Patterson) in the film, it’s Naomi Watts who really shines in the film. She’s portrayed as a strong, confident woman who’s secretly losing control and desperately trying to hold it all together. You can’t help but admire her quiet strength in the face of all her difficulties. Jacob Tremblay, on the other hand, is little more than a victim that gets shunted around, which is a terrible waste of his talent.
Letdowns
Too many jump scares and imaginary sequences
There are too many jump scares resulting from normal occurrences that make you wonder why Mary hasn’t died of a heart attack yet. It feels like the director is trying to force suspense on you through camera tricks, rather than having a genuinely spooky atmosphere. The horror scenes are mostly depicted as fantasy sequences, which get tiresome after a while. If they are all nightmare, why is Mary so frightened?
Gives away half the surprise for most of the film
After the first two or three horror scenes, you can figure out what the big reveal is going to be. To prevent Mary from discovering the truth too early, she’s so easily distracted by visitors that she forgets to investigate the source of a particularly traumatic night, which again, gives away half of the climax. Then when you get to the finale, “Shut In” behaves like the reveal was a great surprise nobody would have guessed, when you’ve already guessed half of it.
A forced and artificial twist
The problem with the other half of the twist is that it defies belief, makes the main character look like a fool, and doesn’t explain the motivation of the antagonist. It’s a twist for the sake of having a twist. The only good thing is that it’s totally unexpected, but for all the wrong reasons. A good horror film like “The Boy” would have had you re-evaluating all the previous scenes and realising they were clues to the twist, but there’s none of that here. Re-evaluating all the previous scenes gives no clue to the twist, nor does it seem logical in the first place.
What exactly does the antagonist want?
And as part of the fallout of an artificial twist, the antagonist seems to want an unsustainable and nonsensical outcome. Sure, it’s a creepy objective to have, with all the perverted implications it comes with. But you’re not sure what the antagonist wants and how the antagonist plans to achieve it. It’s just an excuse to have a psycho run around with a hammer attacking people.
“Shut In” feels like a telemovie. It would have been a great telemovie, though.
“Shut In” opens in cinemas:
– 17 November, 2016 (Singapore)
This review was also published on Yahoo!.
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