RE: The Last Movie You Watched
March 4, 2020 at 9:17 pm
(This post was last modified: March 4, 2020 at 9:24 pm by Rev. Rye.)
This week in The Deep Hurting Project is Shut In, and it boasts one of the most prepostrous twists I've ever seen in a film. It stars Naomi Watts as a child psychologist who lives in the middle of nowhere with her teenage (step)son who, after a car crash, is rendered completely catatonic. And I'll just spoil the twist: he's been faking it. He's managed to fool not only his parents, but also his doctors. I should point out that, in the case of Gypsy Rose Blancharde, doctors were able to tell fairly quickly that she had far more muscle tone than her wheelchair-bound life seemed to suggest, and that was why she and her mother kept moving across the country. In this case, I reiterate that he manages to fool EVERYONE. Not only the doctors who should notice something was wrong, but also his mother, who he has been poisoning somehow without her even noticing that he can actually move.
- Also, the kid from Room is in this, and he plays a deaf kid. I don't know why Naomi Watts would be playing memory games with him, why nobody uses sign language with him, or how he seems to actually be reacting to his mother opening the door in a way that only seems to make sense if he heard her. If someone who works with the deaf can enlighten me as to whether or not this is in any way accurate or if I'm missing something.
- Of course the scene where she drowns her kid was going to be a dream. Of course.
- So, at one point, Naomi Watts goes out just so we can have a jump scare involving a raccoon jumping out of a pile of wood. Okay, there's a later scare about an intruder, which somehow smashes her car window and it turns out that The Kid From Room just happened to be in it somehow.
- They cut to a close-up of the door, which has been locked and cannot be opened, BUT STILL HAS A KEY INSIDE IT.
- Also, the stepson somehow manages to spirit The Kid From Room away. Once again, somehow nobody notices that he can actually move.
- The scene where one of Naomi Watts' patients' father asks her out seems like it was just an exposition dump: shame about how your husband is dead, your son is a vegetable, your client is missing, and there's going to be a huge snowstorm in our neck of the woods. Thing is WE ALREADY KNEW ALL OF THIS FROM PREVIOUS SCENES.
- And for that matter, why has NOBODY suspected that there might be foul play in this situation? The kid is gone, people are worried, she's the last person to see him alive, she should be the prime suspect. Hell, this should be the plot of the fucking movie. Instead, it's basically turning into a shitty, single mom version of Ordinary People. Or at least, what little I remember of Ordinary People, because I haven't seen it in donkeys, and most of what I remember involves a dead kid, a family, the North Shore, and Pachelbel's Canon.
- And why do I get the impression that nothing that's happening to Naomi Watts isn't actually parasomnia?
- He grasps onto her hand, and somehow she doesn't notice that this is a significant change in his condition? I really fucking hope that this is Truth In Television for actual catatonic patients, because this is otherwise a sign of her being really stupid. Or the script, really. Honestly, Naomi Watts does a damn good job in this film. It's a shame that the script is one of the dumbest I've ever seen in a film.
- So, apparently, the reason the doctors didn't notice he wasn't actually catatonic was because they were lazy and why the fuck am I getting Jeff The Killer flashbacks?
- And how did he even GET all those drugs to use on his stepmother without anyone noticing he wasn't even able to move? I've had some trouble getting prescriptions filled that were legitimately filed and even had some refills left in some circumstances. This part seems preposterous.
- Apparently, this movie is predictable enough that the twist that some reviewers could tell that the stepson was faking his catatonia from a mile away. Their decision to give him incestuous motivations, that I did not expect. It just comes right the fuck out of nowhere. The first we see, he's complaining about her, the next time we see him ambulatory, he's ranting about how this was a perfect love.
- And why didn't he kill Tom? He killed his Dad, he caused the accident with the hope of killing his Dad. What's different here?
- To be fair, I liked the scene where the other shrink decides to rush into the house in the middle of a snowstorm only to get an axe to the chest. Of course, it was much better when Kubrick did it.
- The axe... isn't loaded.
It's like they're not even bothering to make the kid's insanity plausible at all.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.