Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Shut In Blu-ray Movie Review

DOA of winter.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 3, 2017

One of the most fun memories I have of my by now long history with home theater equipment is when I purchased my very first (stereo!) television and a VCR, also stopping by a rental place on the way back from the store to pick up Dead of Winter, a kind of on the fly choice I got to watch as a kind of christening of my incredible new high tech equipment (that said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course). Dead of Winter was frankly no great shakes, but its story of a vulnerable female in an isolated location battling all sorts of nemeses, whether real or imagined, was fun and even occasionally fairly tense (especially one scene involving a missing finger). Despite its flaws, Dead of Winter might seem to be High Art when compared to Shut In, another film which posits a hapless female in an isolated location dealing with both psychological issues and perhaps things going bump in the night that are not manifestations of her own troubled mind. How an actress of Naomi Watts’ merits got mixed up in this predictable and resolutely unscary mess is anyone’s guess, but here she is, on hand as psychologist Mary Portman, a woman dealing with the horrendous aftermath of a car accident which left her husband dead and her son Steven (Charlie Heaton) paralyzed and in what amounts to a persistent vegetative state.

Shut In sets up its central premise even as the credits play out, with Mary and her husband Richard (Peter Outerbridge) having come to the sad conclusion that the only way they can deal with Steven’s anger issues is to ship him off to some kind of behavioral modification boarding school. An argument between Richard and Steven in the family station wagon leads to a head on collision with a semi truck (thankfully not explicitly detailed), at which point the film segues to six months later, with the Portmans’ gorgeous Maine mansion now surrounded by feet of snow. Mary still has a thriving child psychology business going on, but a lot of her time is devoted to caring for Steven.

One of her clients is a little deaf boy named Tom Patterson (Jacob Tremblay, Room), who seems to perhaps have a few anger issues of his own, something that is leading an (underdeveloped) foster care woman named Joan (Ellen David) to let Mary know that Tom is, like Steven six months ago, about to be shipped off to some kind of care facility. In the meantime, the weather reports are full of warnings about an apocalyptic snowstorm headed Mary’s way.

So far, Christina Hodson’s screenplay, while not overly artful, has at least provided a bit of subliminal angst and has provided more than sufficient understanding that Mary’s psychological state is at the least fraught and at the worst positively unraveling. Mary’s Skype therapy sessions with kindly Dr. Wilson (Oliver Platt) only reinforce the concept that Mary is living on borrowed time, psychologically speaking. She’s also suffering from insomnia and what appear to be waking (or near waking) dreams. The first real “scare” sequence involves a “fake” dream which then gives way to a waking nightmare, when a recurrent clanging noise forces Mary to go outside in the frigid weather. What initially seems to be nothing more than an errant raccoon ultimately actually turns out to be Tom, who has evidently escaped the clutches of Joan and who has broken into Mary’s car. Mary of course gets the little boy inside where it’s warm, but then almost immediately again, he disappears, ultimately leading to a huge (and well publicized) police hunt.

Had Hodson played this particular plot element a bit more ambiguously, letting the audience wonder whether or not Mary had actually had a real interchange with Tom or only imagined it, things might have seemed more psychologically acute. But it’s obviously posited as a given fact that Tom was indeed at the house, at least for a little while, and so when Mary starts thinking she’s seeing the little boy in the dead of night (wintry or otherwise), the audience has to decide whether or not the film’s heroine is bonkers or experiencing something more nefarious.

As if all of this melodrama weren’t enough, Hodson also introduces a potential romantic interest for Mary in the form of the parent of another one of her clients. This seeming nice guy is named David Hart (Doug Cubitt), and many a horror fan will no doubt be wondering when this Prince Charming will show his true colors and turn out to be some kind of nutcase. I’m not saying that’s what actually happens in Shut In, only that the film’s attempts at misdirection aren’t especially subtle. (In other words, sometimes a cigar is a cigar, and sometimes a nice guy actually is a nice guy.)

There are a couple of other fatal flaws Shut In makes. The first of these is that Mary really isn’t all that isolated, despite her far flung location. She’s surrounded not just by clients and their parents, but also by coworker Lucy (Clémentine Poidatz) and (of course) Steven. But the really inexplicable decision is giving away the identity of the villain at about the hour mark, leaving another thirty minutes or so to play out as a kind of The Shining-esque cat and mouse game amid a frozen setting. Even the “reveal” isn’t especially surprising, but it also defies logic from any number of standpoints, with one central plot conceit about Mary having been fed drugs never really properly explained.

Are there scares in Shut In? Sure, but most of them are cheap ones, aided and abetted by startle effects on the soundtrack and jump cuts, not to mention elements like raccoons jumping out of piles of logs (at least it’s not a cat jumping out of a cupboard this time). Watts does what she can with a pretty haplessly written part, and the supporting cast is also fine if ultimately unable to overcome the clunkiness of both the script and direction.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf evidently liked Shut In considerably less than even I did. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Shut In Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shut In is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot digitally with Red Epic cameras by Yves Bélanger (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild, Brooklyn), Shut In has a few moments of an extremely warm palette in the opening vignette, but then intentionally exploits cooler tones for virtually the rest of the film. Contrast is strong, allowing subtle gradations in both whites (as in the voluminous snow drifts surrounding the focal home) or blacks (as in some of the darkened spooky spaces within the home itself) to provide generally excellent detail levels. As is discussed in the brief production design featurette included on the Blu-ray as a supplement, the interior of the home features cool blues and greens and often scenes within the interior rooms aren't brightly lit. All of this leads to minor deficits in detail levels at times, though a surplus of close-ups helps to alleviate some of those concerns.

Shut In Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shut In's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix isn't especially subtle, and it certainly isn't innovative (within the annals of startle effects and the like), but it's often incredibly effective, with nice rumbles of LFE providing subliminal angst and good sudden eruptions of effects from discrete channels that help to keep the listener as unbalanced as Mary appears to be. Nathaniel Méchaly's score has some good surround presence as well. Dialogue is presented cleanly and there's some decent ambient differentiation offered to elements like the Skype interactions that take place.

Shut In Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Nightmare v. Reality: Imagining Shut In (1080p; 7:39) is the requisite EPK with interviews and scenes from the film.


• The House on Delphi Lane: A Classic (1080p; 4:12) is a brief but quite interesting piece on the film's impressive production design, which blended one exterior house with a number of different interiors, both practical and built for the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:25)

Shut In Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's hard to really fault Shut In for being patently ludicrous when so many contemporary horror films tend to be, but what's disappointing about this effort is the caliber of on screen performer left to flounder amid some ragged screenwriting and direction. With a limited number of potential outcomes (including culprit, if any), Shut In just doesn't misdirect well enough to offer many surprises. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.