Shut In

6 months after a car accident that killed Richard Portman (Peter Outbridge) and left Richard's son Stephen (Charlie Heaton) in a vegetative state, Richard's second wife, child psychologist Mary Portman (Naomi Watts) lives in an isolated part of caring for Stephen's needs while also seeing patients at her home. Mary herself is also in therapy via video conferencing with Dr. Wilson (Oliver Platt) as Stephen was having behavioral problems that lead to her deciding to send Stephen away to boarding school which was what lead to the accident. When one of Mary's patients, a young troubled deaf boy named Tom Patterson (Jacob Tremblay), comes to Mary's home she calls the social worker and volunteers to care for him, but he has seemingly fled into the woods during an incoming Winter storm. As Mary wrestles with worry for Tom and authorities having no luck finding him, Mary begins to hear and see things in her home leaving her to believe there's a malevolent presence.

Released in 2016, Shut In was acquired by Luc Besson's joint venture with Relativity, Relativity EuropaCorp Distribution, which was Luc Besson's attempt to gain a foothold in distribution within the United States after having seen profits from Blockbusters such as the Taken franchise and Lucy kept by Fox and Universal respectively. The screenplay for Shut In written by Christina Hodson had appeared on the 2012 Blacklist of best unproduced screenplays, and the script was acquired by Europacorp for development in 2014 when the company was seeking genre fare to build their release slate. Shut In marks the second, and so far last feature film effort of British TV director Farren Blackburn whose work can be seen in The Fades, Doctor Who, and The Musketeers, and also helmed a number of episodes for Netflix Marvel series Daredevil, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. The movie received terrible reviews from critics and audiences and was a commercial dud upon release. Rightly so because Shut In is an absolute mess of a movie and probably one of the worst mainstream horror films of the 2010s.

The movie's first hour is filled with terribly uninteresting melodrama with Naomi Watts saddled with a lead weight of a role (which Watts was in my opinion unfairly nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress) who's so poorly written that we never actually see her do anything constructive as a child psychologist with almost all of her patient interactions either done off camera or featuring her character distracted and not really doing anything. Watts is clearly trying to give the role something, but the movie is so bereft of anything interesting for the first hour that it ratches up the fake out dream sequences and jump scares to the point the film gets desperate enough to give us a "racoon scare". I can't really go into anymore detail than that, but there's an absolutely ludicrous twist in the movie that only works if several dozen people were blind and/or stupid because there's absolutely no way that what this character does would've been possible to fool this many people who (supposedly) went through an extensive amount of education and certification.

Shut In is absolutely awful. While the movie is well shot and the actors are trying to give something to their thinly written roles, the movie is boring for the first hour then becomes crazy, stupid, and nonsensical in the last 30 minutes. If the movie had been that level of stupid in the last act throughout the entire movie I might've recommended this as a "so bad, it's good" viewing experience, but from its dour tone to its stoic performances the movie just feels boring and never comes to life.

There have been many movies like Shut In before. In fact, I'd argue far too many.

Grisly opening, followed by a quieter first act, then a few hints at something something spooky, then comes THE TWIST.

After we've finished picking our jaws from the floor (yeah right), the movie then concludes in one of those pointlessly elongated chase sequences which would be over much sooner if anyone here had any common sense whatsoever.

A disabled kid's life is in danger, the bad guy hams it up like his life depended on it, and Naomi Watts...

Poor lamb. She deserves much better than this reheated tripe, that's for sure.

But she signed the contract, cashed the cheque and turned up on time to each days shoot... so my sympathy can only go so far.

Oh well. Avoid avoid avoid. 4/10

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!

Clinical psychologist Mary Portman lives with her paralyzed stepson Stephen and a recent accident killed her husband. Mary treats a deaf boy named Tom and one night he entered her home and just disappears from their. She starts to hear noises and she should find tom before the ice storm kills Tom. An empty thriller with a few lazy jumps- scares. The casting was good and Both Watts & Platt give their best shot. Clangs did his best on the soundtrack to create tension where none exists. Overall, it's a total waste of time.

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.