Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | November 8, 2023
Locked In is precisely the kind of bland Netflix thriller you watch because it’s a weeknight, you’re not quite ready to invest in a new season of television, your partner is not around to watch the movie you planned to watch together, and you’re probably going to fall asleep anyway. It’s not good, but it’s also not so bad that you’d turn it off; also, if you do fall asleep, you probably won’t remember to finish it the next day, and that’s OK!
Like most Netflix thrillers — both movies and television series — Locked In is heavy on plot and light on character, the kind of movie designed to shuttle you from beginning to end before you notice how bored you are. It stars Famke Janssen and Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies!), but also the kind of barely recognizable actors you sort of recognize and spend much of the film wondering where you remember them from. For the record, here that is Alex Hassell (The Boys, but he also almost looks like Morgan Spector); Finn Cole, who looks like that guy from Peaky Blinders and, in fact, IS that guy from Peaky Blinders; and Rose Williams (Reign), who doesn’t look like Alexis Bledel or Emilia Clarke, but looks like someone who looks like Alexis Bledel or Emilia Clarke because the lighting is dark and you’re watching it on your phone.
As the movie opens, Nurse Mackenzie (Friel) is asking Katherine (Janssen), a patient who has locked-in syndrome and therefore cannot communicate, if she has been murdered. From there, we get the backstory, and the mystery begins.
As children, after the mother of Lina (Williams) dies, Lina moves in with Katherine, her mother’s best friend. Katherine’s son, Jamie (Cole), suffers from seizures. Years later, Lina marries Jamie, and so her adopted brother becomes her husband, and her adopted mother also becomes her mother-in-law. Lina spends most of her time caring for Jamie, increasingly resentful of her role as his caretaker. Meanwhile, she catches feelings for Jamie’s doctor (Hassell), who is less interested in caring for Jamie and more interested in sleeping with Lina. Katherine also hates Lina because she thinks that Lina married her son for the family money (and her late husband’s manor), and no one in this situation seems happy because they’re together on a countryside estate (“Locked in” has a double meaning, see!?)
The question is: Who tried to murder Katherine, who is unable to reveal the answer herself because of her condition? Was it Jamie, Lina, or Doctor Lawrence? Or maybe, somehow, it’s the nurse caring for Katherine, the same nurse who used to care for Jamie?
It’s a pedestrian, predictable “psychological thriller,” but Netflix counts on one very important factor that makes the twist surprising: The fact that the viewer is barely paying attention. It’s like highway hypnosis: The feeling that you’ve lost time after driving for several hours. Watching Locked In, your brain goes on autopilot soon after the first act and wakes up confused and disoriented during the climactic finale wondering why a certain character is dead. Watching a turtle walk toward you for two hours would be very boring. But seeing a turtle ten feet away, falling asleep, and waking up with the turtle in your face would be surprising! That’s Netflix’s secret sauce! Waking sleep!
For the record, and spoilers: The doctor killed Jamie and tried to murder Katherine. He tried again while she was in the hospital, but Lina stopped him from doing so by stabbing him in the chest. Lina and Katherine live happily ever after, except for the fact that Katherine still has locked-in syndrome, and Lina will probably spend the rest of her life caring for her.
