Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

misscath-54378 Good cast, silly movie. Started out OK, but went downhill fast. I watched this for Naomi Watts but this script was way below her talent. This plot has huge holes. How does a kid pretend to be in a catatonic state for 6 months without anybody noticing? Does he not have physical therapists or doctors come by? Ridiculous.

paulmcuomo This film is terrible. There's nothing more I can say about that. It is sad that there is a considerable amount of talent infront of the camera, specifically from Naomi Watts and Charlie Heaton, and also a fanatastic cinematographer that at least managed to shine this turd as much as they can, but so much of this film was agonising.The main issues with this film can be chalked up to two things: repetitive and dumb writing, and a constant disconnect between audience and story. The same things repeat over and over in this movie:There are SO FRICKING MANY dream sequences, specifically in the first 30 minutes that it grew tired, and resulted in a lot of fake scares that add nothing to the story. The conversations between Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt are the same every time: "I'm having issues sleeping", "Well, you're under a lot of a stress", "Yeah I am, I thinking of sending Stephen away", "Well, that would be understandable", times 5 again. Conversations between characters reveal nothing new, and is filled with dialogue that play like Tommy Wiseau's The Room in that they are catchphrases, and offer only stilted interactions. The finale is the worst - the actual worst. The bad guy gets hit in the head SO...MANY...TIMES, and every time, they pretend like he's dead and not finish him off, while Naomi Watts leaves the kid played by Jacob Tremblay alone twice and you're all like "Why ARE you leaving him there?!"The screenplay sadly does waste an excellent cinematographer on repetitive dialogue, uninspired set-pieces that remind me too much of The Shining albeit worse and with way less snow (seriously, why do people act like they're cut off with snow about 6 inches deep?) and a twist SO dumb it begs belief. It's when this twist is revealed that people who may have cared by this point will walk out. Embarrassing.So, this twist has to be told to be believed. The plot of the movie is that Naomi Watts plays Mary, a child therapist, and is looking after her stepson Stephen played by Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton after he was paralysed in a car crash that killed her husband. While treating Tom, played by Jacob Tremblay, he goes missing and she starts to have weird night terrors. It's revealed about halfway into this mess that Stephen isn't actually paralysed - he's just pretending to be. Furthermore, it's stated that the doctor's at the hospital just accepted it and didn't ask why. Then, when Mary starts treating Tom, he gets jealous and locks Tom in the basement of the house, and the night terrors are a result of Mary being continuously drugged every day with Stephen's meds.Admittedly, it is quite cool in this part of the movie to watch Charlie Heaton who is so quiet and nuanced on Stranger Things just go completely nuts here and just have fun, but it still doesn't help how certain characters are killed off inconsequently, or in the case of Oliver Platt, is fatally stabbed only to survive an additional 10 minutes to give basic as f**k instructions so Mary and Tom can live.Oddly enough, even though this is a terrible film, it is a great first watch just to say you sat down and watched it, and laugh at its dumbass progression. Like I said, great cinematography, fun from Watts and Heaton, everything else is the worst.

Ramon Battershall Dear God, this is dreadful, I've seen some boring horror films, some clichéd ones, and some illogical ones, but this really takes the biscuit. Really, where to begin? The atrocious dialogue that feels like it's been cobbled together after a first-year Psychology lesson? The cardboard characters who hold meaningless conversations that serve no purpose other than to take up time, the plot twist that is so preposterous it's not even funny, it's just stuff that creates a film that people will watch for money?Even at a barely film length of 87 minutes it still felt way too long. Aside from the dialogue between people who can only be described as characters because they're actors mouthing (terrible) lines in a film, at least half of the first act is meaningless jump 'scares' where nothing actually happens.If the first half's dreadful, it's still Silence of the Lambs compared to what can, charitably, be described as the denouement. Following a plot twist that can't really be described as such - it's just something that happens to turn a collection of words and pictures into a film - any remaining viewers are forced to sit through an interminable finale where every possible film cliché is thrown at you until it just becomes white noise, and an ending so ill-conceived, you wonder if the writer has ever interacted with another (or just a) human being. It's like Scream and all the other self-referential horror films never happened. It could have been made 30 years ago and it would still be as stale and unmemorable. I only bought it because it had two credible actors in Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt (why though?!?) and was on sale at Asda for £2.99 - and even then I feel robbed.I can't even say this is one of the worst films ever, it's just nothing, and even now it's beginning to fade from memory.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a shame, really. First, Naomi Watts is no longer the radiant golden girl of ten or so years ago. Age has reduced her to the status of a mere beautiful woman whom any normal man would love to smother in hot kisses.That's unimportant. What's really worrisome is that she's playing in dud like "Shut Ins." She is a widower living in a house in rural Maine, making a living as a counselor in the distant town, spending all of her time at home tending her brain damaged and vegetablized teen-aged son, changing his diapers, spoon feeding him, wheeling his apparently senseless body around.But one of those big Northeastern snow storms is about to blow in, likely cutting off all power and buying everything. She stacks up on comestibles and lanterns and is visited by a genuinely nice guy, single, whom she's met at the clinic, and whose son is also challenged. He's so sociable and helpful that she feels compelled to invite him to dinner. Clearly he's interested but she's polite and distant.The snow has barely begun, or maybe it's already stopped, and she's having nightmarish fantasies, or maybe they were dreams, of her son moving around the house deftly on his own, and then -- and then -- she wakes up to find herself tied naked in the bathtub by her now thoroughly mobile but maniacal boy and she forces her to take sleeping pills and then, and then, she struggles to free herself of her binding lines and then, and then, she swallows a bottle of SHAMPOO to bring up the gag reflex and rid her nude body of those wicked pills, and then -- and then -- well, I just couldn't go on.No, the tension was too great. My heart raced alarmingly as I waited for the next cliché -- the hand reaching in from offscreen, the cat shattering the Mason jar, the mysterious creaking of an opening door, the need to creep down the stairs into the dark basement, the WHAM on the sound track with each new shock.No. It was all too much. I can't remember if I shut it off before I fell asleep.