Feeding hungry, wood-burning stoves the timber they crave, layering fuzzy wool over soft cotton with a parka on top before stepping outside, sipping freshly-brewed tea just for the free facial—that’s right, winter is upon us, and with imagery like this, Shut In is the perfect horror movie to set the mood for the season. So make sure the cabin doors are bolted shut against the blistering wind, breathe in the sweet smell of creaking cedar wood, and lean in to Shut In.
Naomi Watts, who made it big in Mulholland Drive, became a horror move legend with her role as mom Rachel in The Ring, and went on to tackle “more serious” roles in films like The Impossible, comes home to us scar
y movie lovers in this film. In what feels like a rehash of her protective, selfless, single-mom-can-do-all role from The Ring, Watts offers Mary Portman in Shut In. Mary is struggling to do her best to care for her 18-year-old stepson, who survived the car crash that killed her husband, but who never recovered his mental or physical faculties. As Mary describes, Stephen Portman (played by Charlie Heaton of the 80s throwback series Stranger Things) has become a body that she feeds and bathes, but no longer views as her son.
When Mary’s job as a child psychologist introduces her to a troubled little boy named Tom (Room’s Jacob Tremblay), she finds herself taking him into her home, only to lose him to the frigid Maine winter when he runs away. Wracked with guilt for losing Tom and preparing 
to send her son to a care facility, Mary suffers from sleeplessness, night terrors, and general depression. The film plays up the classic “are there ghosts or is she just a loony middle-aged woman” trope, but effectively builds up the suspense and keeps you guessing through to the end.
Shut In’s biggest downfall is that its dialogue seems to have been written by a novelist who squeezed out a formulaic grocery store paperback before turning to this project. As a result, the film offers the depth, believability, and character devel
opment of a daytime soap. But just when I feel I’ve suffered through too much laughably-bad dialogue, too many cheesy loud-music scares, and the last “don’t open that door!” moment I can tolerate, my bad attitude shrugs off.
Some of it is because Shut In thankfully rounds out with some very satisfying gasp-worthy reveals that stay with you long after the credits roll. But it’s also because it builds tension through bad decision after bad decision, and has the whole audience “tsk”ing and shouting our “come on!” through laughter. I realize at some point that not only am I quite entertained, but this film is a participatory blast.
It reminds me of those overconfident, fun teenage years, when we all thought we carried the weight of the world on our shoulders and believed we had the knowledge and answers to hold it up. They were the years of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, when the scares were cheesy, when the dialogue was terrible, and of course, when we all knew better than the film’s protagonists—just
like we knew far better than our own parents did about just about every topic.
And even as an adult, there’s something therapeutic about feeling like at least in one small corner of the world, you know exactly what’s to come, and you can shout it at the screen. Let’s not lie—that’s an especially satisfying feeling just days after election night, when everything I thought I could rely on was shattered, and I was left feeling like I was a teenager again, experiencing the “real world” for the first time.
But thankfully, Shut In helps us prepare to weather the storm. Like good therapy, it lets us both vent to the screen and laugh out loud, all while wrapping us in a warm blanket.
SpecialK Verdict: See it with a packed theater and surrender yourself to some cheesy-yet-comforting “I told you not to run upstairs”-brand horror.
Shut In opens Friday November 11.
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