Boy in the Walls

I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2023 Lifetime movie "Boy in the Walls" without ever having heard about it. But I will say that the movie's synopsis sounded interesting enough, and thus I opted to sit down and give director Constance Zimmer's 2023 movie a fair chance.

The storyline in "Boy in the Walls", as written by Katrina Onstad and David Weaver, was fair enough. It was a pretty straight forward narrative, however I found that the movie was lacking thrills and there never really was a sense of the family living in the house being in any real danger. And that sort of made sitting through 87 minutes of this somewhat of a bland ordeal.

The acting performances in the movie were fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the actors and actresses on the cast list, but they had some nice talents to portray the various roles.

For a thriller then "Boy in the Walls" was sort of a mundane viewing experience. The movie was devoid of any thrills really, and that was a shame, because the storyline certainly had potential.

Sure, "Boy in the Walls" from director Constance Zimmer, was a watchable movie, but hardly one that warrants more than just a single viewing.

My rating of "Boy in the Walls" lands on a five out of ten stars.

It was a movie for one of those days when you really can't seem to find anything worth seeing. After having watched Cobweb just a day prior, this one seemed to be in the same tone. Maybe the idea would be better in the hands of a totally different team, but here it seems to fall flat. The acting was stiff as a board. I hope that the actor playing the dad has a secondary job because acting is not for him. He literally seemed like an NPC. If anyone ever directs a movie about NPC's, I'm sure he'll get a role. The reactions, the delivery of lines seemed like it was done by an automaton. Not even an android. At least, Data in Star Trek, strived to become more human. Compared to this guy, Data WAS human. The actress playing the mom, was far better, though the bar was set pretty low anyway. The action was a bit predictibile, but if you don't set hopes too high, it's going to be ok. No big surprises, a standard horror recipe. The house, the family moving in, the annoying teenager. The girl was really obnoxious, but teens are like that most of the time anyway. Overall, grateful that the NPC was mostly non existent. Meh..I've seen worse. It works if there are no alternatives for the movie night and you set the bar low.

Alisa Jensen (Ryan Michelle Bathe) moves into a country house with new husband Chris (Luke Camilleri) and his two kids, Theo and unhappy teen Maya (Cassandra Sawtell). Chris is a widower and the couple is struggling to conceive. There are strange things happening in the house.

This is Lifetime. The most interesting name here is Constance Zimmer. I love her as an actress. She's trying to branch out into directing. Her work is functional TV and not exactly pushing the edge of the envelope. Maybe this shouldn't be a Lifetime movie. Maybe it should be an indie horror instead. This has no tension.

In the opening credits, it's says "based on a true story"....well the story it's based on is the screenplay of the Toolbox Murders, The People Under the Stairs or more recently, Cobwebs. (IMO)

It's a home invasion movie with all the tropes that go with it: Nobody believes the heroine....medication is the issue....a bratty kid that's irritating af, ...the husband is out of town all the time.....let's not forget to wrap it all up with an emotional hokey ending.

The actors played their roles believably, but without anything original happening throughout the movie. I kept waiting for a plot twist, or a jump scare, but hey just didn't happen.

This movie is fine if you enjoy cookie-cutter plots, but there are so many home invasion movies that are worth the watch. If you skip this one, your 87 minutes won't be wasted.

I'm a huge fan of horror movies, so I was excited when I saw this film pop up on Hulu. I thought it had the potential to be terrifying or at least suspenseful, but it just wasn't. None of the actors did a good job, and it felt like I was watching a bad SNL skit the whole time. The "twist" was painfully obvious from the beginning. I think they shot themselves in the foot with the title. If they had left the "in the walls" idea a surprise, it wouldn't have been so boring. It just feels like nobody involved with the creation of this movie has ever seen real people interact with each other. This movie is so bad that I don't think you'd even be able to enjoy it while drunk.