Walk-in, run-in, let-in, give-in, turn-in, move-in, sit-in...now comes shut-in. “A shut-in is a person who, due to physical, mental and/or emotional reasons, is not able to leave his or her home. These conditions can cause a person to feel lonely, isolated, sad and cut off from the rest of the world. Sometimes, they do not have family and friends available to visit and spend time with them. They often lack any kind of companionship.” Shut In, the movie, is a generic psychological thriller, about a relationship, but lacks craftsmanship, and is likely to score very low on viewership.

Naomi Watts stars as lonely Mary Portman, a child psychologist who conducts therapy sessions on the grounds of her isolated Maine, New England home. She never wants to be too far from her 18-year-old catatonic step-son, Stephen (Charlie Heaton), who was left paralysed after an auto mishap that killed his father. She’s obviously devoted to her work, and especially attentive to difficult patients, such as Tom (Jacob Tremblay), an almost deaf young orphan, who gets terribly violent and has even broken the arm of another kid. Against her wishes, Tom is sent to a foster home.

Mary is consulting a psychiatrist, Dr. Wilson (Oliver Platt), about the guilt pangs of having recommended disturbed teenager Stephen’s sending away to a special school, and the car accident that killed her husband and left him in this state occurring during that trip. She is also tiring with the routine of bathing, propping and feeding Stephen, who does not speak and whose only real activity is watching TV.

Tom suddenly turns up at Mary’s home, where he is found sitting in her car, having smashed the window glass and let himself in. He has apparently runs away from foster care, and Mary decides to put him up. Soon afterwards, he vanishes without a trace, triggering virtually non-stop news reports about a state-wide search for the boy, who is presumed dead. Is he really dead, or is he playing a horrific hide-and-seek game with her?

A 2012 Black List script, British writer Christina Hodson’s maiden effort was picked up by Lava Bear Films in November 2014. It is a French-Canadian co-production, scheduled to be released in February this year, by EuropaCorp. I am not surprised that it could make it to the screen only a full nine months later. Even then, it has the appearance of a premature baby. There is referencing galore, tropes and more, red herrings and unstable bearings, you name it.

Shut In begins in the most staid, uneventful fashion, takes it own time to get into the characters, then misleads you into the supernatural, subsequently uses a psychiatrist to rationalise Mary’s hallucinating, fearful dreams to sensationalise, and, finally, tries unsuccessfully to explain everything with a highly unnatural climax, using a testing level of suspension of disbelief to create its own logic.

Perhaps they were unable to steer away from the supernatural, their chosen path being so charted, and yet unable to make the film interestingly and convincingly scary and terrorising, without those crutches. Sometimes, realistic can be listless, and detail can be pointless.

Halfway into the film, Ah! Stephen King, you say, and the teenager’s name is a giveaway! Director Farren Blackburn, who is British, and has worked in TV (Hammer of the Gods), agreed, but with a slight qualification.

“I think there was no getting away from that, simply because it’s set in Maine, in the winter, and when I read it, it immediately felt quite Stephen King. There are elements, I would say, of Misery, as well as The Shining, and while they were obvious influences, I didn’t set out to replicate anything. Those are two of my favourite psychological thriller/horror films, and they probably seeped into my being via osmosis, watching those movies so many times, so there are subtle nods and hints toward those movies. But also, as I said, there is hopefully a Hitchcockian level of tension throughout Shut In that makes you hold your breath for 90 minutes. That was my intention.”

A dash of King can be seen. But almost nothing about The King, British master Alfred Hitchcock, unless the noise made by a raccoon in the dead of a freezing winter night giving the jitters to Mary is your idea of Hitchcock.

There are a few redeeming factors: the counselling sessions, the honesty of the lead characters and the sincerity of the performers, the ambience beautifully captured by the cinematographer Yves Bélanger. Eschewing the trodden path but using the same signposts is a contradiction that works against the narrative.

Naomi Watts (48, British roots; King Kong, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Insurgent, Allegiant) is easy and under-stated for the most part, which helps in keeping the screaming and shivering to a manageable level. Oliver Platt (X Men First Class, Chef, Kill the Messenger) is a Canadian with unconventional looks. He appears on Skype and seems to be treating his patient with earthy wisdom and kid gloves, perhaps standard psychiatric practice. From his last session till the climax, he is made to ham it out.

Charlie Heaton (22; As You Are, Rise of the Foot-soldier Part II, Urban & the Shed Crew) Netflix’s Stranger Things) gets to straddle both ends of the acting poles: inanimate and over-animated. Good job, within the constraints of the twist in the plot. A word about Jacob Tremblay (Canadian; Now 10, Smurfs 2, Room, Before I Wake): he’s a little boy with a big repertoire of expressions, all of them enunciated without a word. David Cubitt (Seventh Son, Stone Wall, Rehearsal) is cast as a divorcee wooing Mary, whose square features, a pugilist’s frame and marginally overbearing nature are probably used as decoys. He’s into his role. Crystal Balint (Canadian TV), Alex Braunstein (TV), Ellen David (Dominion, Iqaluit, Nine Lives), Clémentine Poidatz (35, French, TV) and Tim Post (Enemy, X-Men: Days of Future Past) are around to render support.

Shut In clocks in at all of 90 only minutes (probably 88 in India, with Watts’ displays of Watts’ anatomy clipped off), and such brevity of screen time calls for frugal usage of temporal resources. But then again, maybe we are seeing the best of what was shot!

This ‘mood flick’ remains Shut In for the better part, and when it does open-up a bit, the scene-ario is rather bleak, quite like the bleak winter setting of the story.

Rating: * ½

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqRdVOQ98k8