Walled In - Murata viva

I had high hopes for this movie after seeing the trailer. This could have been a good movie, but... The production team seemed to have run out of money, and then had to wrap it up really fast half way through, causing a hasty and staggering series of quick shots with "one-take" scenes. This, obviously, made the actors look bad and that's a shame. They did a good job at the beginning of the film. The first 20-30 minutes of the movie is actually pretty good, but I'll save you the time by saying that it went downhill FAST. I'll give you perspective that the budget of a film means nothing to me. Sure, I love the special effects that make the big-budget films soar and help tell the story, but I like the low-budget, indie films just as well, provided it tells a good story. This film has neither. When they started to rush, they lost the viewer by getting off track, and seemingly changing the actual story line, making it confusing, wobbly-paced, and completely destroying the story. Not intense, not scary, not interesting. Save your time and enjoy a good indie thriller or a big-budget film that you've yet to see.

Walled In is the kind of horror film that sets itself up in a bizarre location and then explains all kinds of bizarre rules to make the scariness work. The movie opens with a series of headlines that explain the terrible discovery of 16 bodies cemented into the walls of a building, including that of the architect who designed it. We learn that the person who walled them in, Joseph Malestrazza, was never caught, and then we cut to 15 years later, when the building is planned to be demolished.

Mischa Barton stars as Samantha, a young member of the demolition company family, perfectly named the Walczak's (the 'c' is silent). She recently graduated from engineering school and it becomes her first lone assignment to visit the building and supervise its demolition. It's a perfect set-up for a horror movie, I suppose, although as soon as we get to the building, the one where the 16 bodies were discovered, you remember, and learn that the wife and son of the murdered architect are still living there, the movie takes a pretty serious turn for the worse. I would think that if a man suffered the terrible fate of being murdered and cemented into the walls of a building, his wife would take it upon herself not to raise their son for his entire life in that building. But that's me.

Upon her arrival we meet the woman living there and her creepy son, who explains things to Samantha that the lights go off every six minutes to conserve energy, she shouldn't go to the 8th floor (that's Malestrazza's quarters, you see, and it's never cleaned), and whatever you do don't go on the roof! I would think that someone planning the demolition of a building would explain the logical deficiency of avoiding certain parts of it, but we understand that this is a horror movie and these goofy rules he's explaining are a set-up for freaky sequences that are to follow. There's also the issue of a few remaining people who lived in the building and who are not likely to appreciate Sam arriving to destroy it. The young boy also worries that Malestrazza will be offended by her plans.

I was reminded of the brilliant novel House of Leaves in a lot of things about the movie. Sam discovers enormous discrepancies between the blueprints and the actual measurements of the house, which in that book led to a fascinating and frightening series of events, but in the movie leads to the cheap and utterly witless third act. There is also a lot of throwbacks to Psycho in the relationship between the young boy and his mother in an isolated location. Sam even describes the building as being "like the Bates Motel, only bigger," and at one point the mother forbids her son to go near Sam, telling him that Sa could never take care of him the way she does. Creepy.

Ultimately we learn about an "ancient architectural belief" that provides the reason that Malestrazza killed people and walled them into his buildings (and also the reason why not one of the 27 buildings that Malestrazza built have ever been torn down). It gives the movie the feel of something with more thought in it that it actually has. I felt a little flicker of interest when this was revealed, but in retrospect it strikes me as little more than a screenwriters brainstorm.

I understand that Walled In is based on a novel, and I hope the novel is better than the movie. Books, especially horror books, are always better than the movie, ad if someone read the book and thought it was good enough to make into a film, it must have been better than this movie, because it has all the sign-posts of a weak horror film. It's full to the brim with cheap scares (notice the Screeching Cat Scare, which at least was made a little bit different but essentially is the same old thing, and my favorite, a scary rose scare. You have to see that one to believe it) and blatantly rips off a whole series of other horror movies. I'm curious what the movie would have looked like had director Gilles Paquet-Brenner never seen Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, and the Nightmare on Elm Street films. He even uses that "One, Two, Freddy's Coming For You" song several times. Real creative there, buddy.

I won't go into the details of the end of the film partly because I don't want to ruin it for you but mostly because it's so dumb that I don't want to bother spending my time explaining it. I will tell you one thing though. There's a particularly amusing scene where the boy accuses Samantha of thinking that he's nothing but a "crazy little boy." You gotta see this scene, man, it's hilarious. At the time that he says that to her, I won't tell you what he happens to be doing, but when you make a statement like that, it's generally not a good time to be acting like a crazy little boy.

What follows that scene is a third act that is not entirely without effect, but definitely one of the dumbest situations that I've seen in a horror movie in some years. It is so bizarre and makes so little sense that the movie almost becomes a mystery. Another mystery is why the thing got made in the first place, but sadly, after seeing the movie, I don't think I'm every going to be able to bring myself to read the book

This movie had its promise, really interesting building and background legend. Unfortunately the authors forgot that the beauty is in the simplicity. The first two thirds do have some promise, but after that the movie slips into really over-combined mess.

Too much characters are packed in very small place and strange and totally illogical things do happen without any logical reason. This mess actually only confuses the viewer, it does not add drama nor thrill.

I seriously do like movies about strange buildings like "The Toolbox Murders" but the beauty of it is in clarity and simplicity. You simply do not want to see story in which the catharsis is mess of various scenes without any logic or reason. You basically know how the movie ends but you have no idea why it ended this particular way.

This movie would need serious clean up and simplification of the last third part to be actually good. It is just incomprehensible and the characters introduced in the first two thirds are mostly wasted. What a disappointment!

I used to be a very easy grader, till I've seen too many Horror films that simply didn't do the genre justice. So I've found myself rating many films 4 - 6, and too many times unimpressed. In this case, however, I must say I think this film is a little underrated...

The beginning and build up were absolutely fantastic in my book. It's become rare to find this kind of original screen writing, and being the Horror freak that I am I've seen many many horror films. The idea of a killer walling-in his victims? Simply awesome! As the film continued, however, I've found too many aspects resembling Toolbox Murders, although they all changed and became their own ideas towards the ending. Same goes for the twists - I always like playing the guessing game in these kinds of Horror-Thrillers, and I love it when all my guesses are wrong!

I've actually seen many complaints and critics talking about plot-holes and bad screen writing, and I must say I simply don't understand why... have I missed something? There are many aspects on which the film could have improved, but plot-holes? The acting and cinematography have also been just right if you ask me. As for the ending - a little anticlimactic, but that's the main problem in most Horror films of the pas decade or so. Also, the build up is better than the ongoing film, so the great potential could've been lived up to better. Also - the things that bothered me the most - the homage to the Freddie Kruger "One, two..." song. Out of context, out of its league, and simply wrong!

All in all - I liked this film a lot more than Toolbox Murders, and I think it's definitely worth watching. It might not be a masterpiece or one of the best ones, but very few are. In general - never trust the critics, or the reviewers. Always watch and judge for yourself!

I never saw the trailer, but I can guess that it gives off the wrong impression. "Walled In" is not a horror movie, at least not like "The Ring" or "Saw" or anything that features murderous ghosts, demented psychopaths and rivers of blood. So if that's what you're looking for, I hope I saved you 100 minutes of your life.

Instead, "Walled In" is basically a slow paced mystery. The story is about a young rookie demolition engineer named "Sam" (Mischa Barton) whose first job is to survey and plan the demolition of a very creepy and cool building where 15 years prior, a bunch of grizzly murders took place and the killer was never found. Although this premise may lead you to expect a Saw like serial killer game of cat-and-mouse, the story took a different approach. This is really about Sam slowly piecing together the puzzle of what happened and trying to solve this cold case.

Is it terrifying? No. It is creepy? Yes. Largely due to the formidable building (which supposedly doesn't exist in real life but had me fooled enough to spend an hour unsuccessfully googling where it was located), the dark, desolate vibe of this film is very powerful. The lighting is very dramatic with extreme dark and shadows, much like the Exorcist III insane asylum scenes, and the color palette is very rusty. I don't remember seeing any greens except in the very beginning. We are immersed in a visually surreal world that expresses decay.

But I stress again that this is not a gory slasher supernatural horror flick, even though the visual style looks that way. I would put it in the same genre as "Dream House" (2011), "Rosewood Lane" (2011) or maybe even "The Sixth Sense" (1999). Like all of these films, the mystery has its fair share of surprises, and I have to say I didn't see the twist coming, but after thinking about it for a while it made perfect sense, and all the characters' bizarre actions were explained. It should be noted that this is an adaptation of a best selling novel, so the book probably goes into more detail. But this still worked for me.

I thought Mischa Barton's acting was excellent, playing an inexperienced heroine without being an idiot. Almost all of the acting and casting seemed to fit perfectly. The only exception was, surprisingly, Cameron Bright, whom I loved in the similarly-vibed mystery romance "Birth". Here he reprises a similar characterization of an emotionless mystery kid, but in "Walled In" I felt like his role could have added more value if he were more explosive. But who knows, maybe the director was making the point that that growing up in a creepy, isolated concrete monolith all his life would lead to a severe lack emotional development.

"Walled In" definitely presents a lot of psychological food for thought, and I haven't even touched on the really cool artistic and historical themes of architecture that play heavily. Definitely not a gut-grabbing slasher flick, but if you've read this far, then I think you should give this flick a whirl. I really enjoyed this movie and wouldn't hesitate to see anything else the director does.