Locked In is a cinematic jail sentence

Mena Suvari and Jeff Fahey star in this heart stopping, action-thriller Locked In from Saban Films. After dabbling in short films, Carlos Gutierrez makes his feature directing debut and handling the script duties. Single mother Maggie (Suvari) has fallen on hard times since her husband ended up in jail. A recovering drug addict in a low-end job, Maggie is also trying to raise her daughter Tarin (Jasper Polish).

Meanwhile, Mel (Fahey) and Ross (Manny Perez) have just pulled off a diamond heist that took a fatal turn. The pair of thieves must entrust their fortune with an accomplice who also happens to work at a high-tech storage facility while they lay low. Hiding the goods within the labyrinth of storage units, the thieves inside man pays the ultimate price when he turns against them. Now, hell-bent on recovering the missing stones, they seize the facility and kidnap the surviving employee Maggie (Suvari), threatening her family unless she helps them. With nowhere to run, Maggie’s only chance to escape alive is to fight back and stay one-step ahead of her captors in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

As you may have already guessed, the thief’s accomplice has a connection to Maggie. On the one hand, I will give the writers a bit of credit for setting up why Maggie goes into work, but the rest of the film is a mess. I do not mind a good genre film, but no one in the cast turns in a performance worth mentioning. Suvari is a long way from her glory days in American Beauty and the American Pie films. Throughout the film, there were numerous moments where I wanted the villains to put her out of her misery.

The usually reliable Jeff Fahey is on autopilot for the entire film and looks bored in the role. When Costas Mandylor shows up, I knew exactly where the film was going to go, but by that time, I did not even care anymore. In the end, Locked In is a film that takes itself too seriously and does not know how to fully embrace its premise for good old-fashioned fun.

Final Grade D-

Locked In will open in select theaters and be available VOD on May 7th.