Walled In (2009)

Walled In: Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner. With Tim Allen, Mischa Barton, Darla Biccum, Cameron Bright. Supervising the razing of a mysterious building, a young demolition engineer discovers past inhabitants entombed within its walls by a vicious murderer. Now she must turn the tables before she becomes the killer’s latest victim.

“Samantha Walczak (Mischa Barton) is the first Walczak to graduate college, and follows the family tradition of demolition, despite her love of architecture. She is sent on her first assignment to a building from an eccentric architect, Joseph Malestrazza, who cemented the bodies of people into his walls, including himself. This allegedly gives the building immortality, which is a bit of a problem when youu0026#39;re in charge of demolishing it. In the battle between demolition expert and spiritual architecture, who can win?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI watched this film, and found myself let down after the first ten minutes. I enjoyed the opening scene with a young girl becoming part of the building — more scenes like this would have sold the film — and the credits over newspaper articles detailing horrific murders tied to the building. But the remainder of the film just flopped and dragged like a captured fish out of water, and to say what I would say and say it better, I defer to the reviews of Michael DeZubiria and Horror.Comu0026#39;s Staci Layne Wilson. (I am reluctant to encourage readers to venture from Killer Reviews, but these are excellent writers.) u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWilson touches on all the right allusions, hinting that u0026quot;Walled Inu0026quot; has aspects of Argento, Poe, Roeg, Polanski and Cocteau — names you donu0026#39;t just throw around. DeZubiria compares the story in some respects to Mark Z. Danielewskiu0026#39;s unique 2000 novel u0026quot;House of Leavesu0026quot;. But Wilson is right when she says the directing u0026quot;plays it safeu0026quot; and falls short of all these looming figures, and the accompanying cinematography is u0026quot;not very innovativeu0026quot;, which is unfortunate for a film set in a building as interestingly bizarre as this one. DeZubiria flatly states that u0026quot;Walled Inu0026quot; u0026quot;blatantly rips off a whole series of other horror moviesu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWilson and DeZubiria both find the film discourages, rather than encourages, reading of the original book — Serge Brussolou0026#39;s novel u0026quot;Les Emmeuresu0026quot;. Wilson says u0026quot;the movie quelled my curiosityu0026quot; and DeZubiria bluntly says the book u0026quot;must have been better than this movieu0026quot; but u0026quot;I donu0026#39;t think Iu0026#39;m ever going to be able to bring myself to read the booku0026quot;. As I found the plot to be largely a rehashing of u0026quot;Thirteen Ghostsu0026quot;, and the storyline as given in the film to be boring, I have to concur — the book is likely better than the film, but doesnu0026#39;t seem worth my time to seek out.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eDeZubiria doesnu0026#39;t reveal the end, but says itu0026#39;s u0026quot;so dumb that I donu0026#39;t want to bother spending my time explaining itu0026quot;, and thatu0026#39;s a fair assessment. I seriously had a difficult time sitting through half the movie, it was a bit of cinematic torture to make it to the end. The u0026quot;making ofu0026quot; featurette doesnu0026#39;t help or add any value to the DVD. Wilson rightly says itu0026#39;s nothing more than back-patting. If you want to see the cast and crew congratulate themselves on a boring movie, be my guest. But I think these two reviewers got it right — there are many other authors and directors who deserve to have their films appreciated. Read and watch those novels and films, and leave this one to be quickly forgotten in your local video storeu0026#39;s discount bin.”