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(Review originally written at 15 October 2008)
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Please pay attention film-makers, this is NOT how you should make a movie.
While "Deadbolt" is hardly the worst movie I've ever seen, I just can't exactly call it a good or effective one either. It hardly has any good ideas of its own and it uses a bad build-up, which just never pays off in the end.
It's obvious that this movie got made for TV. It has this typical look and atmosphere over it, which a movie just has never ever benefited from. It's also painfully obviously that the movie just didn't had the most talented people involved in the creation process. Both the acting and the directing is really lacking, as well as the story obviously.
Besides the fact the story is hardly anything original and is something that has been done a lot better in earlier genre movies, the movie also has some real problems with its build up and logic. The build up is simply far too slow and basically nothing good or interesting is happening in the movie its first 30 minutes. After that the thriller elements more or less start to kick in but again, it doesn't use a good enough build up for this to consider this movie a successful or effective genre piece. The movie just never becomes tense, also since you just simply couldn't care less for any of the characters, which is mostly due to the acting performances from its actors.
Justine Bateman is just not the kind of actress you should give the main lead. She is good enough for small bits in TV-series but letting her carry an entire thriller movie on her own is a very bad idea. Sometimes I like Adam Baldwin in his roles but main problem with Baldwin (no relation to the Baldwin brothers) is that ever since his "Full Metal Jacket" he thinks he can just play a psycho in every movie and that he can get away with just everything. Granted that he always gets typecast a lot though. He plays his role in this movie far to over-the-top, which just doesn't make his character really believable and therefore the movie as a whole also just doesn't quite work out as intended.
The movie also just didn't always made quite sense to me. So you turn into an obsessive and murderous psychopath when your wife commits suicide? And after you've been locked up for 5 weeks, with very little food and water, by a man who has murdered your ex-husband, your best friend and your roommate-to-be, all you worry about is what the police is going to think? Some things within this movie just didn't made much sense, which also made this movie quite ridicules in parts.
It's also of course a fairly predictable movie, also since it just isn't the most renewing or original one around. It's the kind of movie of which you just know in advance how each scene is going to end and how's going to live or die and how and when.
You're simply better off not watching this little unknown TV movie thriller.
4/10
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