New to Netflix from today is the mystery thriller, Locked In. Directed by Nour Wazzi, and starring Famke Janssen, Anna Friel, Rose Williams, Alex Hassell, and Finn Cole, the movie tells the story of a nurse’s attempts to unlock the secret to a coma patient’s injuries.
In the film, it has been five weeks since Katherine Carter was brought into hospital, after sustaining series head trauma. After spending three days in a coma, she is awake but unresponsive and completely unable to speak.
The doctors believe Katherine is suffering from locked-in syndrome – a state in which she is aware of what is going on around her, but she can’t move or communicate. However, Nicky Mackenzie, the nurse assigned to look after Katherine is determined to get a response.
Can Nicky uncover the truth behind Katherine’s injuries? And what could her condition have to do with Katherine’s twitchy adopted daughter, Lina?
Through a series of flashbacks, Locked In hopes to reveal the uncomfortable truth at the heart of this tale and provide the answers about both Katherine and Lina. But whether you stay the course to see how it all pans out, is another matter entirely.
Playing out as a sort-of cross between a one-off BBC drama, and an episode of a nice looking but ultimately quite dull TV soap, Locked In is a small-scale thriller, which is steeped in melodrama but boy, is it dull. The film gets off to an interesting start, when the mystery surrounding Katherine’s condition is established, but then it’s pretty much downhill from here on out as the picture gets lost in an endless series of flashbacks.
These flashbacks largely revolve around Lina, and her complicated relationship with the two men in her life, both of whom seem to be total drips. Not that Lina herself is particularly exciting, as she spends significant chunks of the film moping about with a face like a wet weekend.
Locked In wants the audience to care about Lina and her love life, because it’s supposedly vital to the central mystery surrounding Katherine’s condition, but it’s all so very tiresome. There’s nothing in her story that hasn’t been seen before, and the more time spent with her, the more tedious everything becomes.
And I mean everything. The first ten minutes of Locked In held my attention, but the next 80 minutes seemed to purposefully go out of its way to put me off.
The only highlights of Locked In are Anna Friel, who plays nurse Nicky Mackenzie and who delivers a genuinely great turn; and Famke Janssen as Katherine, who barely speaks a word in the film, but who is mesmerising to watch (for the wrong reasons). Friel is interesting, because she delivers a compelling performance which suggests she is acting in a completely different (and much better) movie; while Janssen offers up some fun because her British accent is entertainingly bad.
I imagine this is why Katherine has little dialogue in the film, because Janssen seems constipated every time she needs to utter a line. Although without this stilted dialogue delivery, the film would be less interesting to watch, so at least it has some merit.
Outside of the above, Locked In is a beautifully shot movie, which is something I guess, and it boasts some strong cinematography. The story may be yawn-inducing at times and extremely predictable, but it does at least look good.
Other than this, there’s not much else to offer. Locked In seems to have good intentions, but it’s nowhere near as imaginative as it wants to be, and I doubt anyone will make it all the way through without their mind wandering.
Locked In is watchable, but so are skits from TikTokers. Just because they exist, and they pass the time, doesn’t mean you need to see them.
Unless you’re bored, and you have a strong desire to bore yourself even further, give Locked In a miss. It’s bland, it’s derivative, and it’s not worth devoting 90-minutes of your life to.
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