Film Review: Shut In
The only genuine twist in the film occurs in the opening minutes of the film — three, to be precise — when the car in which the father and 18-year-old son Stephen (Charlie Heaton) are travelling, crashes, with senior dead and junior paralysed. This was preceded by the viewer being shown Stephen’s copious glares of venom as he’s taken by his dad to deal with his anger issues. Child clinical psychologist and step-mom Mary Portman’s (Naomi Watts) guilt pangs leads her to selflessly look after Stephen. The supposedly scary fragments of the film get on screen (and on your nerves) when nine-year-old deaf-mute Tom (Jacob Tremblay), who Mary wants to take under her wings, disappears and she undergoes a series of eerie nightmares.
‘Shut In’ is largely predictable and scarcely terrifying. It relies considerably on deafening sounds to generate jump-scares — in one instance a raccoon is all that emerges after a loud and petrifying thud. Naomi Watts does her best to prolong the suspense while wonder child-actor 10-year-old Jacob Tremblay (Room, Before I Wake) seems wasted in this inept role.
Set in Maine, New England and shot entirely in the wintry and snowy locales of Quebec, Canada, ‘Shut In’ has very few elements expected from top-class jump-scare thrillers. It is left to cinematographer Yves Belanger’s skills to make amends for director Blackburn and debutante screenwriter Christina Hodson’s lackadaisical premise. How apt would an anagram like ‘Shun It’ be for this film?
