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Reviews
Shut In (2022)
Absolute drivel
From moment one, I knew Rainey Qualley was gonna have her work cut out for her. She's used mainly as a prop, with the way a lot of the shots are set up (holding up the match in front of her face for an interminable length of time). The script is horrendous; it's as if the writer watched a single scene from 12 different horror movies and decided she knew how to write a script. The directing is catastrophic, using absolutely every horror movie trope to the only effect of sheer annoyance. The stakes should be there, but the execution on all accounts is atrocious. At one point, the pedophile returns and Jessica (Qualley), locked in the pantry, acts more like she's mildly inconvenienced rather than attempting to break the door down to get to her children. But she's not the only one. Every performance is agonizingly one-note. From the heroine to the two antagonists, they leaned into every stereotype imaginable. The script tries to be smart with thought-provoking allegory, but it's really just overt and daft symbolism, from the rotten apple at the beginning to the stigmata. This is an excruciatingly arduous trek through a quagmire of human detritus, that has all the subtlety of an out-of-tune car alarm at 2 in the morning. If Uwe Boll is the dirty urinal of cinema, Shut In is the piss-swill crusted to porcelain.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
The Power of Oscar Bait
This is an over-bloated "think-piece" that plods aimlessly into critical acclaim.
Cumberbatch's accent is atrocious, and his performance is very much performative. He's playing the idea of an irascible rancher, hitting all the right beats, but there's no authenticity to it.
The heel-turn he makes toward the end of the film is unearned. He goes from being an absolute dick to the kid, to being a mentor/father-figure/lover(??), simply because he watched other people bully him.
The film is mediocre at best, and a dumpster fire at worst.
The only redeeming quality this movie has is Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee, who've deservedly earned Oscar nominations for their work.