WalledIn

Walled In (2009)

Mischa Barton stars as Sam Walczak, the first member of her family to go to college. As a newly minted architect she joins the family business. The Walczak’s blow buildings up, or down actually. Her first assignment is to take down an apartment building that was built in the middle of nowhere by a mad genius of a designer. After she arrives and meets the strange tenants who still live there she realizes that something is really wrong. A bit of research reveals that the building was the site of a series of bizarre murders that took the life of several tenants, as well as the architect who designed the building. The killer was identified, but never found. What mysteries does the soon to be destroyed building hold and how far will people go to hide them?

This is an interesting movie that is very flawed, but at the same time has a great ending that surprised me. The story takes far too long to really get into the flow of things after an interesting start. The flashback with the little girl in the cement is twisted and did a good job grabbing my attention. But then we get the slow build up of the character Sam arriving at the building and meeting the strange tenants that still live there. There is far too much time spent on characters that only are there to serve as false suspects or plot devices (the boyfriend) to trigger the actions of the other characters. In the end they just serve to slow the movie down and honestly the middle of the film is boring. When towards the end of the movie we focus on the few characters that really matter things start to pick up, until we get an unexpected and really memorable ending.

The performances are actually quite good. Before this I really hadn’t thought that Mischa Barton had the acting chops to carry a movie like this herself, but I was wrong. Though her performance gets a bit “whiney” towards the end I really thought she did a bang up job working thru the mystery. Also Cameron Bright is really good as the young tenant who befriends Sam and helps her figure out what it going on. He does the tortured teen boy with a crush thing very well. Plus he goes from sweet kid to creepy teenager very convincingly. The rest of the characters are pretty generic and don’t really give the actors much to do.

Walled In doesn’t have much to speak of in the way of special effects. In fact there are only 2 deaths in the entire movie and one of those happens in the first couple of minutes of the movie. So no bloodbath here, sorry gore hounds. The camera work is pretty good; except for a few times they decide to disorientate the viewer by shaking and tossing the camera around. I’ve always felt that this was a lazy man’s trick and used far too much in the modern horror film. That said there are a few well-executed jump scares, which are set up by the excellent camera work and lighting that can be seen when the camera isn’t jerking around.

Basically Walled In has some issues with pacing due to a convoluted story and far too many characters. But a killer ending with a twist that I never saw coming helps to make up for some of it’s defects. All in all I can’t recommend a purchase, but I think that this one is well worth a rental. Who knows you might like it enough to buy it later on. The movie is available from Anchor Bay. Check out their web site for more details at http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer