Shut In (2016)

It's crazy how bad movie production has become lately.. What is wrong writers and directors? This predictable movie stuff being produced now days is no excuse to blame on piracy or low sales.. It IS getting Ridiculous!

I practically sat there with my wife at the movies and could dam near predict almost half of what was going to happen past half way through the to the end.

Its a shame because this movie could have went so many other ways to give us something refreshing to look at.. but NO.. The laziness kicked in on this movie like many of the other crap being produced now..

It's getting bad!

Fmovies: I like Naomi Watts a lot but boy does she really need to pick and carefully choose what she wants to be in. I thought she was really fantastic in Mulholland Drive (probably my favorite film of all time). She's also been in a number of great memorable performances. i fact, shes even been in good horror in the past. Years later she's in a really awful "horror" film that doesn't offer any thrills or chills but rather just insists on wasting your time.

This film is about a psychologist, played by Watts, following a car accident that killed her husband and left her son paralyzed (played by Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton). She starts to think that someone is inside her house trying to harm her. Who could it be though? Her son is paralyzed and immobile? The plot doesn't even sound interesting and there really isn't anything in the film that you could actually enjoy. The film is devoid of any actual chills, the scenes meant to make you jump are set up in a way that is so manufactured over the years, where you know exactly what to expect.

The film just kind of throws characters into the mix and you are left wondering what purpose they really serve? Poor Jacob Tremblay, going from a wonderful performance in Room, to being thrown into something like this. The twist ending is so awful. Its half expected but doesn't bother offering any consolation for wasting your time. There's honestly too much going on in this film, its too busy with people and trying too hard to deliver a substantial story but it comes off really uninspired, tired, and boring. The twist also offers some really weird awkward moments too.

Check this out if you want but there's really nothing to see here. Shut yourself out.

4/10

From my point of view this movie was a good movie that has all ingredients which a suspense/thriller movie demands. Story was OK, acting was OK, dialogues were OK according to the scene neither more nor less, cinematography was also good. I think it was a perfect movie i don't know why people have given below 5 rating with bad comments. For me if you have to watch a suspense/ thriller and horror movie then there are some rules to apply before watching. first you make an environment for the movie, you have no other work to do between the movie, you don't talk between the movie, you don't even miss a single dialogue, your lights should turn off so that your focus should be completely on the movie. So i think those who have given it less than 5 rating did not apply those rules otherwise the rating of this movie should have been not less than 6.

Shut In fmovies. This review of Shut In is spoiler free

* (1/5)

EVERY ONCE IN a while there will be a horror-thriller with an interesting premise, and for a while this will bode well for the film industry but then disaster strikes. There will be a film released when the thrills take ages to kick in which is interesting if it's done well, even Naomi Watts has been in a few of them Mulholland Drive and The Ring to name a couple.

If it's done horribly nothing bodes well for the film, this shows in director Farren Blackburn's Shut In. Here Blackburn is away from his natural home of directing TV episodes (he's even been tasked for making the first episode of this year's Iron Fist). The film stars Watts as Mary Portman a Child Psychologist who works close to home. She has a good day working with a child until she gets the call that her 18 year-old stepson (Charlie Heaton) has been involved in a head-on collision, and he is paralyzed. She has to take care of his every need, bathe him, feed him and clothe him.

For a while this isolation horror-thriller has an interesting premise, there are even a couple of gorgeous shot of Watts walking through the snow covered wooded environment outside her home. Unfortunately the screenplay written by Christina Hodson is garbage, and at points awkward down to a tee that it makes it hard for its main star to read out the lines. In addition with terrible performances, even at Watts' standards. There is a point in which Mary seeks help from her employer (Oliver Platt), she states that she is seeing a ghost of a child that she takes care for, he then says that ghosts don't exist she's just sleep deprived. It plays on this for quite some time not giving much information or any idea of where the film is heading.

To an extent the film also involves pretentious jump scares, which appear in a theme, of she hears banging goes to investigate and it turns out to be a false alarm, or she is grabbed and scared half-to-death, this sparks a vulnerability theme. There are a lot of those feelings in this. It's not original. At this point there is no hope left for Shut In. Seemingly we wait for what feels like an eternity for something even remotely thrilling to happen, at which point we've had our thousandth yawn. To spark the audience's attention it calls the barricade & hunt style card, last year's The Boy played on that theme too. It doesn't need to be said, but it's fair to say this is a tired - frankly unoriginal, incoherent horror-thriller with nothing interesting going for it, it's just drivel we've seen before.

VERDICT: A tired horror-thriller, with poor performances even by Watts' standards, and garbage screenplay. It'll be better to watch this while sleeping.

"I just want to help you." Mary Portman (Watts) is a child psychologist that has lost her husband and is taking care of her invalid son. She does her best to counsel other children while her life is crumbling down. She becomes concerned with one child in particular and now she has to decide to do what is best for the child. What she wants, or what others think. This is a movie that is worth watching because of Naomi Watts. She does everything she can to hold this movie together but it still just doesn't work. The movie starts off OK, but by the end it was hard to tell what was actually happening and what was real and what wasn't. I do like movies you have to think about, but this one just didn't make sense and you are left thinking about what is happening, then something else strange happens and you are trying to figure out how it fits and then something else happens and you just give up. That is not a good thing to happen in a movie. Overall, a movie with really good acting but just never really settled into something I could get involved in. I give this a C-.

Shut In is a rather predictable thriller that treads a well worn path.

That's not to say this is a poor film, its just that this concept has been recycled so many times, its become rather obvious whats happening and where its going.

Naomi Watts hands in a decent effort in the lead role and indeed, the cast in general hand in competent performances. The tension builds nicely but I felt, the reveal was too sudden and robbed the film of much of the scare factor that had been built up to that point.

The actions of the key character also seem a bit absurd at times as does the overall concept, which stretches credulity to a degree.

In short, not a bad film if you like a few scares but regrettably nothing terribly special either. Six out of ten from me.