Locked In Parent Guide

After the death of her mother, Lina (Rose Williams) moves in with her mother’s friend Katherine (Famke Janssen) and her step-son, Jamie (Finn Cole). Jamie suffers from a seizure disorder, and with Katherine busy trying to rebuild her career, Lina soon becomes his caretaker. As Lina and Jamie mature, the relationship evolves into an unconventional romance – one which puts a serious strain on Lina’s relationship with Katherine.

Then Katherine is the victim of a deeply suspicious hit and run incident, leaving her in a coma for three days, and “locked in” thereafter: she’s conscious but unable to move or speak. Her specialist, Nurse Mackenzie (Anna Friel) is confident that Katherine is still in there, and if she can recover some function, she might be able to shed some light on what happened to her. But Katherine’s life is full of complicated relationships, with Lina, Jamie, and even the local town GP, Doctor Lawrence (Alex Hassell), so finding the truth will require some serious digging.

Locked In really hit me with the old bait-and-switch. For the first ten minutes, I expected a tense murder investigation based on one seriously injured witness and a limited perspective. What happened thereafter was a slow descent into soapy melodrama. While you probably shouldn’t judge a film by the first ten minutes, I will say in my defense that the film is billed as a psychological thriller: my mistake came in believing that assertion.

Confusingly, director Nour Wazzi chose to break up the movie’s main elements in a manner that does not improve the story’s overall cohesion. There’s a frame narrative in which Nurse Mackenzie tries to figure out the plot; the other three-quarters of the film feels like Lady Chatterley’s Lover crossed with a dinner theater murder mystery. I kept catching myself trying to fast forward through the umpteenth awkward conversation between people who hate each other but won’t do anything about it other than make rude personal remarks at inopportune moments.

Locked In is an R-rated film, so you can expect a certain amount of graded content. In this case, the biggest issue is likely the profanity, although the two minute adulterous sex scene (complete with female toplessness) doesn’t add value either. If that’s not a problem for you, and you’ve been desperately searching for a telenovela with a murder subplot, look no further. Just don’t call it a thriller.