Brief Story Line
On an unusually heavy rain day, Jason (Wagner Moura - Civil War, Dope Thief mini series etc) with his wife Ann (Greta Lee - Toy Story 5, Past Lives etc) and their two children the 12 year old Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) & 8 year old Ruth (Riley Chung) were planning to go out and buy Christmas tree when they realized they were unable to open the doors and windows. They found out other neighbors were all having same problem. As it was unclear on the reason and how long they would be trapped, the family had to survive on limited food and tried their best to live on.
Things became worse with each time passed especially when they noticed something sinister was outside and they had to also protect themselves.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When I started watching this movie, I was really intrigued and excited when the family first realized they were unable to open their doors and trapped in their own home. As story progressed though the intensity was reduced a bit as the story seemed to shift their focus on survival. Although it felt as a complete change of pace but somehow I did not feel it to be less interesting. A lot of times when I watched something that was completely different from my expectation, I would be disappointed and lose interest. However this one did not have such effect to me as I thought the performance of the cast were pretty awesome and I was curious of how it would end.
During the time I watched this, my wife who was watching another drama would sometime caught glimpses of the movie. Funnily enough she was so curious that she stopped watching her drama and completely focused on this film particularly in the last half hour which was also the most intense part. For a movie with 112 minutes duration, the first hour was combination of suspenseful & intriguing moment of being trapped with obvious threat on the outside and survival drama. I was pretty surprised with the story's development after two third of the movie but I could later understand the reason as it required lot of physical attributes to pull through at later stage. Btw there was no mid or post end credit scene here, but there was a very brief sound at the very end in case you are interested in that sort of thing.
This film was directed by Louis Leterrier (Fast X, Now You See Me etc) who was also credited as producer. It was written by Matthew Robinson (Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Dora and the Lost City of Gold etc). I believed this movie was enjoyable due to the convincing performance of the lead cast Moura and Lee plus the quite awesome make up department who made them looked like they had been trapped for long time & the special effects team. The kids also portrayed their roles nicely despite not having lot of experience. Aside from the names above there were two more important cast of Emma Ho (Home Bodies etc) and Gabriel Barbosa as characters that you should see for yourselves. In addition, there were very few support cast including Arden Cho (Teen Wolf TV series etc) as the narrator.
To my surprise though, I read that critics were not impressed with this movie with particular note mentioning the lost of momentum when it moved from suspense to survival. In this case I disagreed with their views as the shifting did not make this unenjoyable cause we were still totally absorbed with how they would survive and the why. The climax was also entertaining with a reasonable enough conclusion. Overall my wife and I had a good time watching this and we did not have any major complaint of the movie. So if you are interested in seeing a sci-fi intense movie combined with a bit of survival drama, then I think you would enjoy it like we did. But if you are like critics and do not appreciate such shift in genre, then you might not be satisfied with this. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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