Shut In

Filipe Manuel Neto

3/10

2/28/2023

**An attempt at horror that doesn't yield more than a few jumps out of a chair.** For as long as there has been horror cinema, we have seen several films where the great element of terror is loneliness. With humans being as social an animal as we are, being confined (and we've seen this in the pandemic) can really be a form of slow torture, and things get worse if we associate loneliness with isolation. Being alone, in a place isolated from everything, like a cabin in the forest or a country house, can be ideal for relaxing, for a weekend, but few people adapt to living like this. Of course, there are people who prefer it... but they are exceptions. This film's script is just another one that takes solitude and isolation to turn it into a painfully frightening experience (or at least, that was the intention). Here we have a child psychologist who seems to have been forced to suspend a good part of her work in order to be able to take care of a teenage stepson who became quadriplegic after a car accident, which he inadvertently caused in the middle of a fight, and in which his father died. She does, however, keep a patient, a deaf child who appears at her house at night, alone, in a blizzard, and who disappears into the surrounding forest. After several searches, the authorities begin to believe that the boy did not survive. At the same time, she begins to see him around the house, and to believe that she's being haunted. This summary is enough for us to see that we are not looking at anything particularly original, and that much of this has already been done, better and more competently, in productions with a larger budget. Even so, and without ever being really scary, the film plays well with the theme and with the usual “jumps” that North American horror uses exhaustively. Farren Blackburn only loses for not being able to create a more effective suspense by investing more in the film's introduction and character development before launching the horror. There are films where we feel that the director wasted too much time introducing and presenting the story and characters… but this film makes the exact opposite mistake, and does not allow the audience time to sympathize with anyone. There is still a lot of material about dreams, or about nightmares, but none of it is really carried forward. Naomi Watts is the movie's big star, and I really can't understand how she ended up here. Will she have read the script before taking this job? Is she going through a less good phase of her professional career? What matters is this: she is one of the few salvific elements that keeps this movie from being a total waste of time. The actress is a great professional and, as always, committed herself to her work, but she doesn't have the material to match, a skilful director or strong colleagues to take her to a more refined level. Steven Portman and Oliver Platt don't have the time and opportunity to show value. Technically, the film doesn't have any major problems, but it doesn't have anything that gives it flavor either. It's like eating white rice without anything to go with it: we eat it, but it's not a dish that satisfies us, and obviously we don't like it, no matter how good it is.