Walled In |  | Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Actors: Mischa Barton, Cameron Bright, Deborah Kara Unger, Noam Jenkins, Eugene Clark
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.97
Buy Used: $1.48
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 32840
Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 91 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: D15907D
UPC: 013131590791
EAN: 0013131590791
ASIN: B001L9EXMU
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
AN ENGINEERING GRADUATE SUPERVISES THE DEMOLITION OF THEMYSTERIOUS MALESTRAZZA BUILDING.SHE COMES FACE TO FACE WITH THE HORRIFYING SECRETS OF THE BUILDING AND ITS PAST INHABITANTS.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 condemned for being structurally unsound . . . February 7, 2010
trebe
Walled-In (2009) does provide some twisted minor thrills, but despite having four writers, the story makes almost no logical sense. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is in charge of this mess that features Mischa Barton (The O.C.), as Samantha Walczak, of the firm Walczak and Sons (where are the sons?) who are in the business of demolishing buildings. Her job is to determine the best way to demolish an ugly, monolithic apartment building, located in an isolated area, in an unspecified American location.
The structure was designed by architect Joseph Malestrazza (Pascal Greggory), who apparently had some radical ideas regarding building materials, as some fifteen years prior (1993), human bodies were discovered inside the concrete walls of the structure. One of the dead, was the husband of the building's current caretaker Mary Sutter (Deborah Kara Unger), who along with her teenage son Jimmy (Cameron Bright), are among the handful, still residing in the condemned structure. Jimmy is enamored with Sam, and their developing 'relationship' is about all there is happening here, besides Sam wandering around the halls measuring, and painting red X's where the demo charges are supposed to go. Events suddenly take a dramatic turn in the film's final act, as matters descend into a dark twisted opera.
Relying on `atmosphere' and ignoring reality, pretentious, melodramatic, drivel like this, insults the intelligence of the audience. The setting is unique, but not in a credible way. The unattractive building is supposed to have been the home for hundreds of people, yet there isn't even a paved road to the place. There are no visible utility poles, so power and communication service apparently gets there via underground lines. Hardly likely. The building is built alongside a lake? Tricky to do, but possible. The structure isn't compliant with building code, as it has no elevator, landscaping, fire alarm system, exterior lighting, or covered parking. It does however have crappy lighting, hidden shafts and passages, some restless spirits, a totally wacked out roof (are those solar panels?), and an overall design that would never have been approved by any competent building department in the USA. The building's biggest 'secret', just could never happen.
Sam Walczak is laughable as an engineer. This job is her big test as a professional, yet she knows absolutely nothing about the history of the building, and has to rely on a kid for information. The term 'blueprint' is archaic, referring to a process that has not been used for decades. Explosive charges are typically placed to destroy structural members, usually columns. A structural wall does not crumble when hit with an axe, so there's no point painting an X to plant a charge there. Sam is working in a low light environment, exploring unlighted shafts, but doesn't even have a flashlight.
Mischa Barton does what she can, but the script is appallingly awful. Cameron Bright does a good job as an annoying, creepy kid, but unfortunately the best acting that Deborah Kara Unger does, is in the humorous making of featurette, where she talks about how great the film is.
Creepy atmosphere, but bland and boring January 3, 2010
N. Durham (Philadelphia, PA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There seemed to be a bit of promise with Walled In, especially considering the film's opening sequence and the creepy atmosphere offered up by the building most of the film takes place in, but alas, the film as a whole is a rather bland and boring affair. The OC's Mischa Barton stars as a demolition agent employed to research said creepy building for future demolishment, only to discover the building's (and its architect's) dark secrets and be obsessed over by a creepy teen (Cameron Bright). While Walled In does have a lot going for it, and Barton is actually pretty decent in the lead, the film just plods along in its relative predictability, until finally concluding in a pretty laughable ending. Still, the gloomy atmosphere does give Walled In a bit of redeeming value, but in the end, there really isn't much here to recommend.
 If this film was in French it would be great Euro trash... Oddly recommendable. December 15, 2009
APC Reviews (USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Lost in the Depths November 8, 2009
Richard Stoehr (Bremerton, WA USA)
I'll say this much: the first minute or so of 'Walled In' was one of the most disturbing scenes I've seen in a modern horror movie. Not because it's gory (it's not), but because it cuts deep into one of the worst things I can possibly imagine.
This is what really effective horror does well. It takes us places we don't want to go, it leads us down paths that scare the hell out of us, but it does so in such ways that we are compelled to follow. A good horror story will terrify us, thrill us, and drag us kicking and screaming all the way to the end, be it a bad or good ending.
'Walled In' has the potential for this, to be sure. Being buried alive scores high on most people's lists of things that frighten them to the core. Just ask Edgar Allen Poe. 'Walled In' takes this basic premise and starts out of the gate running hard, looking like it could be a real winner. It falters a little but finds its pace again with a few genuinely scary scenes in the first half of the film. The final third, however, is an uncoordinated mess, and the scares that kept us going through the first part of the story are abandoned for a rather bland take on an old theme.
The film looks good, is shot well and for good creepy effect. The actors are all fine. Mischa Barton fills her role well enough, and Deborah Kara Unger is excellent as always, slightly off-kilter and intentionally so.
Its the story that fails here, both in its main plot elements and how they are told to us. The scares are uneven and the tension crescendos at about the 60-minute mark, with too little follow-through to keep it going. Simply put, that first terrifying, disturbing scene punched me in the gut and left me reeling for a while, and there was potential for more of those as it went. 'Walled In' could have led me down a very terrifying path indeed, to a place of nightmare and darkness and sorrow.
Somewhere, though, it lost its way, and I lost interest. Too bad, really.
change of pace thriller October 24, 2009
DonMac (Lynn, MA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
i like Walled In because it is different. I am sick to death of all those torture-themed horror movies; they are so boring in their efforts to just out-gross each other. this is a creepy little thriller that never really let's you know where it's going. actually, it really reminded me of one of those cool made-for-tv ABC horror movies from the 70's. replace mischa barton with kate jackson or donna mills and there you have it. fun. recommended.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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