WALLED IN (2008)

[indianasmith]

If we had a section for "Movies that Tried Really Hard to be Good", I would post this thread there.  This movie had a clever idea and really wanted to be a good, edgy horror flick, but it just fell ever so short. 

Newly graduated architect Samantha Walczak (Mischa Barton) accepts a job from her dad's demolition company - to demolish a huge hotel built on the edge of a swamp in the middle of nowhere by famed architect Joseph Malestrazza.  Sixteen bodies, including his, had been found encased in the cement interior walls of the hotel a number of years ago.

Sam arrives to meet the creepy caretaker (Debra Kay Unger from CRASH) and her rather creepy 18 year old son Jimmy, plus a couple of diehard tenants who won't leave.  She begins hearing noises in the walls, and realizes that the blueprints she has for the building are completely off from the actual placement of walls and floors . . . and is forced to wonder:  Were all the bodies recovered in 1993?  Was it really Malestrazza's body the police found walled up in his own apartment?  And who is the shadowy figure spying on her?

This movie started off very solid, but instead of an actual ghost story, you wound up with a rather tedious stalker flick.  A few decent scares here and there, no real nudity (sorry Mischa fans), and a fairly pedestrian ending ruined what started out to be an excellent scare film.

But, that being said, it wasn't bad . . . it just wasn't mearly as good as it should have been.

[Jack]

I was interested in seeing this - the exterior shots of the hotel looked incredibly cool.  But yeah, most of the reviews I read said it was nothing special.  We'll put it on page 4 of the wish list 

[Doc Daneeka]

Basically the same I thought about Untraceable