Shut-In is a new horror movie with minimum advertising starring Naomi Watts, Oliver Platt, and Jacob Tremblay (the little kid from Room). Basic premise… Naomi Watts lives in a great big house in the middle of the woods… her husband and step-son were in a terrible accident and now she takes care of the comatose teen boy while running a psychiatric practice out of her converted garage (which must make her patient-base very small given how isolated the house is but nevermind that). She starts to have weird visions and believes that she’s being haunted by the ghost of a boy (Tremblay) who was a former patient gone missing in the snow storm that’s blanketing New England.
There’s some twists and turns in this movie, one major one I predicted early on and another based on some bad casting of two characters who look so much alike that I was led on my own red herring. I kind of blame the movie’s production for that – they didn’t have to look so similar unless it was some abstract attempt to mislead the audience.
This is ultimately a suspense/horror movie but the first two thirds are basically just jump-scare and “it was only a dream” factories. To the point where you kind of just stop caring since pretty much anything weird happening is probably just another dream or the thing that jumps out is a raccoon (accompanied by a scary sting on the soundtrack).
When the movie stops wasting our time and gives us the plot, it’s an alright twist that (like I said) I’d seen coming. And then it’s just a cat-and-mouse game that started reminding me a lot of a low-rent version of The Shining.
To the flick’s credit, it looks alright and the acting is good. I can’t say it’s the worst super-generic horror movie I’ve ever seen. No reason to go see it though.
Score: 66