1/30/2012
Walled In (2008) Review
Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If this film was in French it would be a perfect piece of style conscious, Euro trash "suspense" and "terror-lite" type movie making. It is not in French. But it is, however, unashamed to act out its peculiar premise and its stylishly framed but derivative plot devices with a vague Euro-esque decadence, as though everyone in the film wished that they had in fact been speaking French or Italian. Think "The Shinning" meets "Psycho" meets "Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea". In fact, echoing "Sailor Who Fell...", Mischa Barton bears a more than suggestive resemblance to Sarah Miles, and Cameron Bright bears a striking resemblance to Jonathan Kahn, the boy who played Sarah Miles' son in "Sailor Who Fell..."
There's something about the film that makes you think that the producers and writers were thinking of Asia Argento, or felt that aspiring to make an Asia Argento like film was a high calling.
The production values are much higher than you might have any reason to expect, and the film is stylishly and well designed, lit and photographed. The lead actors all do very serviceable work, and Mischa Barton is especially good in her Sarah Miles mode. However, the presence of many different production and distributing company logos on the front end of the movie is the sure tip off that this direct to video production has been handed around quite a bit to raise the necessary capital and deals to get itself before the camera and finally out into the marketplace. How many companies does it require to fund, produce and distribute a C-list movie? Four or five, evidently.
This Blu-Ray disc is so cheap it has no menus, no pop up menus, no extras and no sound options at all. Nada. It just plays, over and over.
Is it scary? Not really. Is it anxiety provoking? Well, no. Is it peculiar that a world famous architect, thought to be dead, has been secretly living the life of an imprisoned mole at the bottom of an eight story tall well hidden in the center of a Neutra like high-rise apartment building located in the vast empty fields of Saskatchewan, while waiting for a beautiful woman to someday fall into, or be fed into, the shaft by a Norman Bates like looney-kid with a strangely foxy mother, who both live almost alone in the building after all the other residents have either been inexplicably murdered or have moved out, so that the architect may entomb the woman, or himself, using an automatic concrete mixing and pouring system of his own device, built into the building with forethought of this eventuality and a knowledge of ancient Egyptian building practices, so as to make the foundations of the building immortal? Well, uh-huh.
Is it great to watch Deborah Kara Unger be Deborah Kara Unger and to scope out the decaying but stylish mid-century modern sets, furnishings and set dressing? Well, you betcha. This film has to be on the "guilty pleasures" shelf. But, still, it's there for a reason. Oddly recommendable.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Walled In (2008)
Recent engineering graduate Sam Walczak travels to the middle of nowhere to supervise demolition of the mysterious Malestrazza Building.She soon comes face to face with the horrifying secrets of the building and itspast inhabitants, many of whom were entombed alive within the walls of the pristine building by its obsessed architect.As Sam begins to unravel the clandestine details of the architect's life and his astonishing building, she is drawn into the dark and frightening reality which forces her to accept her own darkpast and turn the tables before she becomes the last victim.
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