Shut In

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A widowed psychologist is left to care for her paralyzed son during a storm. She begins to believe that there is someone in the house with them. Shut In has its glimmering moments that occasionally shine through. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie just doesn’t work. Naomi Watts, Oliver Platt, Jacob Tremblay, and Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things all give emotion to their performances. The problem is in the rest of the execution. The direction of the movie isn’t terrible, per se, just pretty standard. The cinematography is very dull. The writing is awful, and clichéd. Fifteen minutes into the movie, we get a fucking dream sequence. By the time the thirty minute mark rolled around, I’d gotten my first lazy jump scare of the movie. When certain plot elements need to be brought up or explained, it feels more clunky than natural. Then they give one of the absolute worst fucking plot twists I have EVER seen. From there, this movie went from being something that just kind of bored me to something that actually pissed me the fuck off. For all the good horror and thriller movies that have come out so far this year, I was really hoping that those damned jump scares weren’t going to end up rearing their ugly heads. The sad thing is that I felt like Shut In had a lot of potential that comes off as wasted. The isolated setting doesn’t work nearly as well as it should. The movie doesn’t really even seem to have much of a structure. It just sort of meanders. Even by the time the halfway point came up, I felt like nothing had happened yet. Really, the best possible word that could describe Shut In as a movie, it would be boring. Despite the talented cast actually trying, the characters just aren’t well written enough for me to truly care about them. The bland direction and shitty writing angered me and sank a movie that I felt had a decent premise, and the potential to be a good movie. 

1 / 10