Tom: “SHUX! HUH?! What does it stand for?!” We don’t really know. That’s all for this week! What have you been up to, everybody? Read More Categories News 7 Comments 7 Comments I am just really excited for everyone to see these! Not only do we have some really rather exciting games available to have a peek at, but we’ve also got multiple team members in one room! Together! Doing previews! What a concept.
#Reviews of shut in series#
Over the next couple of weeks you can look forward to a series of videos going over a whole bunch of new releases from a huge array of publishers. However! That doesn’t mean we’ve got nothing for you, now! Podcasts will still be sliding out as per usual (sorry for skipping last week – technical difficulties!) – but more excitingly, we’re going to start rolling out our preview videos just a little early. Of course, just like ol’ Worm Month – that doesn’t mean we’ve taken our feet off the gas, far from it! We’re working on some stuff that’ll be fresh out the oven when we’re back and, of course, we’re putting together ‘the actual show’, where Matt has concocted some fab ideas for live stuff if you are making your way over to Vancouver in… TWO WEEKS?! Oh blimey. This state is, unfortunately, not that conducive to making ‘hot new content’ – so we’ve not got a video going up this week and have taken the opportunity, as a team, to have a bit of a rest on the content-schedule before SHUX.
I am a gloopy goblin who has been playing Railroad Ink in bed and doing very little else. And that’s not really fair, even when appraising leftovers.Tom: Folks, I am bogeyed up. It’s difficult to say much about other members of the cast - including David Cubitt as the father of one of Mary’s patients - without running the risk of spilling beans. Oliver Platt is aptly intense as Mary’s deeply concerned psychiatrist, even though most of his performance is quite literally phoned in (or, to be more precise, Skyped in). To give Watts fair credit, she is frequently compelling and altogether credible as Mary. But when the ice storm cometh, a threat more corporeal than paranormal emerges, the nods to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” accumulate - and, yes, the lights go out. Add a few “Ha! It’s only a dream!” fake-out scares to the mix, and pretty soon she starts to believe that something supernatural is going on. Mary already is stressed-out and sleep-deprived when she starts to hear strange sounds echoing through her house late at night.
That is what the scriptwriting gurus refer to as foreshadowing. Indeed, it seems like the local media are covering only one other story: forecasts for an upcoming ice storm that likely will cause power outages for folks in rural areas.
Tom runs away from foster care and briefly turns up at Mary’s home before vanishing without a trace, triggering virtually nonstop news reports about a statewide search for the boy. But she’s obviously devoted to her work, and especially attentive to difficult patients such as Tom (Jacob Tremblay of “Room”), a deaf youngster whose disappearance serves as what scriptwriting gurus refer to as an inciting incident. She never wants to be too far from her 18-year-old stepson, Stephen (Charlie Heaton of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”), who was left paralyzed after an auto mishap that killed his father. Naomi Watts stars as Mary Portman, a child psychologist who conducts therapy sessions on the grounds of her isolated Maine home. But, given the prominent acknowledgement of a reshoot crew in the closing credits, it’s quite possible other cooks also were involved in the preparation of these slightly warmed leftovers. Director Farren Blackburn and scripter Christina Hodson are billed as the responsible parties. It’s an undistinguished and predictable hodgepodge, so blandly generic as to suggest that it was cobbled together by filmmakers referencing a how-to handbook who picked spare parts from other, better thrillers. As thrillers go, “Shut In” is conspicuously short of thrills.