Walled In
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Recent engineering graduate Sam Walczak (Mischa Barton) travels to the middle of nowhere to supervise demolition of the mysterious Malestrazza Building. She soon comes face to face with the horrifying secrets of the building and its past inhabitants, many of whom were entombed alive within the walls of the pristine building by its obsessed architect. As Sam begins to unravel the clandestine details of the architect's life and his astonishing building, she is drawn into the dark and frightening reality which forces her to accept her own dark past and turn the tables before she becomes the last victim.
Deborah Kara Unger, Cameron Bright, and Noam Jenkins costar. [D-Man2010]Sam Walczak (Mischa Barton), is a recent engineering graduate. At her graduation party, her father, an owner of a demolition company, gives her a gift: a job supervision the demolition of a building in the middle of nowhere. If she's sucessful, she will become his partner. Sam arrives at the Malestrazza Building (named after its architect), and is greeted by Mary (Deborah Unger), the caretaker who tells here that she will be staying on one of the apartments in the buildinga and that she is to stay off of the eighth floor and the roof. Jimmy (Cameron Bright), the caretaker's teenage son, takes her bags to her apartment.Sam asks about the buidling and Mary is suprised that Sam is not aware of the buildings history and that it's better that she does not know. Sam is curious and while at the local store she looks on the internet and finds that the Malestrazza Building was a crime scene were 16 bodies where found entombed in the walls. Since Sam knows the story about the building, Jimmy takes here to the eight floor and tells here the story. Malestrazza's mistake was taking the girl scene at the beginning of the movie. The girl had a puppy and when the police went to question the architect the puppy darted into his apartment and lead the police to a wall. They found the little girl in the wall. Jimmy is now that puppy's owner. The police then locate 15 additonal bodies in the walls of the eighth floor. Mary (the caretaker) and her husband were also residents of the apartment building. Mary had to identify her husband whose face was ripped of by the concrete while she was pregnant with Jimmy. The arrested a disgruntled factory worker for the murders. The lights go out in the abandoned eighth floor and Sam hurts her leg. In the bathroom, Jimmy cleans her wound and then begins feeling her thigh. Sam asks what he is doing and he realizes his error and stops.Sam has nightmares about being entombed in the walls.Sam's boyfriend arrives and admires the building. The arrival of Sam's boyfriend upsets Jimmy. Sam and Jimmy have an argument and Jimmy says that after she finishes her report she'll leave and forget all about him. To which she replies that she would not. As Sam and her boyfriend, explore the 8th floor they, secretly watch Mary at that place were her husband's body was found. They eventually talk to Mary and when she leaves the apartment they are both locked in. Looking for a way out they find a passage way that is not on the blueprints. The travel down the corridor and notice the walls have window that allow a person to look into all the apartments. Sam realizes that Jimmy was watching her while she was in the bathroom and is upset. They eventually land in a different part of the building and move a false wall where they enter the garbage room and see an exit sign. Mary opens the door and asks if they are done looking through peoples garbage.Later that evening, Sam and her boyfriend are in her room having sex. Jimmy is on the other side of the wall listening and feeling distraught. Sam stops in the middle and is worried aware that Jimmy might be there. Sam's boyfriend calms her fears and continues, while Jimmy is behind the wall in agony that Sam is with someone else.
The next day they wake up and find Jimmy's butchered dog in their apartment. Sam's boyfriend thinks Jimmy killed the dog and wants to leave.As they were about to leave, Jimmy gives Sam a gift, Malestrazza's journal which talks about the design of the building and his theories. The building was like the egyptian pyramids (hence the corridors not on the blueprints), she also realizes that that is why the building has so much space in the middle and that there is something in the center where light can show all the way down to the basement. Jimmy tells her that he is going to go to the roof to find the light source she is talking about. When Jimmy doesn't return, Sam and her boyfriend go to the roof. They find the part of the buidling she was looking for, a whole in the roof or shaft that leads straight down to the basement. Sam realizes that Jimmy must have known about this and is about to leave when she hears Jimmy call out that he fell down the whole and is hurt and needs Sam to come down and help him. Sam is eventually lowered down the hole by her boyfriend, but at the halfway point her boyfriend is show with some sort of weapon that looks like a pointed long steel rod. He leans over the hole holding the rope as he bleeds down the whole and all over Sam who gets frightened and lets go of the rope and is now hanging upside down as her dead boyfriend bleeds all over her clothes and body.Jimmy then drives Sam's car to mail her demolition report and then sinks her car into a lake.Sam awakens in the basement area naked but covered with blankets. She sees a man sitting with a lamp on. Sam is finds her clothes and puts them on. She asks the man who he is, but he says that she already knows. She figures out that he is Malestrazza. He plays the tape for her of Jimmy asking for help. Jimmy is keeping her down there with Malestrazza until she learns to love him. Sam also learns that Malestrazza was the mastermind behind the murders and is dumbfounded tha people beleive that a factory worker could concote such a scheme of entombing people. She keeps asking about her boyfriend and Malestrazza tries to tell her that he is dead by cutting his arm and saying one mark for every soul. He also tells her that if he does what Jimmy wants that Jimmy is nice, but can be very cruel and imaginative when he disobeys Jimmy's orders.Later, Jimmy asks his mother when do you know when someone else's loves you. Mary says that you know when the person is willling to sacrafice everything (or there life) for the other person. He then says is that why you sacraficed your son for a dead man.Jimmy is back at the whole and sends down a cassette tape. Malestrazza plays the tape and Jimmy says that he wants to see same and Malestrazza dance. Sam reluctantly dances, but when Jimmy tells them to kiss. Malestrazza smiles showing Sam his blackened teeth and she protests. Malestrazza pulls her close and forces her to kiss him. After a few seconds Jimmy tells them to stop and threatens Malestrazza not to touch Sam again. Jimmy then sends down a basket with food, water and a two-way radio. He tells same to keep the radio with her so that they can talk and be close.Sam looks for a way to escape and realize one wall leads to the garbage area. When Jimmy returns, she lies and says that she is hurt and needs medicine. She talks about the time when Jimmy bandaged up her knee and claims that she enjoyed that time and there time together, but that in order to show him all that she can do for him she needs to get out. Sam walks to the center of the room and tell him that this is for him and she removes her shirt. Jimmy looks down and leans back. Sam gets her medicine. She opens the capsules and starts creating a mix to try and blow out the wall to get into the garabage room. Sam's attempt fails and Jimmy is upset that she tried to escape.Before Jimmy could exact his punishment, his mother Mary, catches him. Mary realizes that Sam is in the hole with Malestrazza. Mary tells Jimmy that that place was for the architect not anyone else. She realizes that Sam must stay in the hole with Malestrazza or else they'll take her away and Jimmy will be an orphan.Sam is stuck in the whole with Malestrazza who she realizes does not want to escape. This is his tomb and he picked her to kill him. She eventually does kill him after some taunting by Malestrazza and he thanks her after he falls into his tomb and it begins to fill with cement. Sam is next by the wall hoping that Jimmy will come through and save her.The demolition team arrives and her father asks where Sam is. Mary tells him that she left. Her father says that he thought she would want to see her first building demolished. Mary is keeping Jimmy calm as they set up and being to install the explosives. As the countdown beings, Jimmy starts saying Sam and then screams her name and runs toward the building. Sam's father tells them to stop the countdown. At the roof Jimmy looks down and her father asks what have done. Jimmy then throws himself over and lands next to Sam. Sam is lifted out of the hole and put in an ambulance.Sam narrates that the Malestrazza built 16 buidling all of which are still standing. He considered the Malestrazza building his masterpiece.

Review: Walled In is the kind of horror film that sets itself up in a bizarre location and then explains all kinds of bizarre rules to make the scariness work.
The movie opens with a series of headlines that explain the terrible discovery of 16 bodies cemented into the walls of a building, including that of the architect who designed it.
We learn that the person who walled them in, Joseph Malestrazza, was never caught, and then we cut to 15 years later, when the building is planned to be demolished.Mischa Barton stars as Samantha, a young member of the demolition company family, perfectly named the Walczak's (the 'c' is silent).
It's a perfect set-up for a horror movie, I suppose, although as soon as we get to the building, the one where the 16 bodies were discovered, you remember, and learn that the wife and son of the murdered architect are still living there, the movie takes a pretty serious turn for the worse.
I would think that someone planning the demolition of a building would explain the logical deficiency of avoiding certain parts of it, but we understand that this is a horror movie and these goofy rules he's explaining are a set-up for freaky sequences that are to follow.
Sam discovers enormous discrepancies between the blueprints and the actual measurements of the house, which in that book led to a fascinating and frightening series of events, but in the movie leads to the cheap and utterly witless third act.
I'm curious what the movie would have looked like had director Gilles Paquet-Brenner never seen Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, and the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
What follows that scene is a third act that is not entirely without effect, but definitely one of the dumbest situations that I've seen in a horror movie in some years.
PA-THE-TIC If you find boredom scary then 'Walled In' is truly terrifying.I'm not sure what the producers' plan was to take an incoherent story, really bad acting, really really bad production quality and mixing them together.The plot: A small town's (the typical horror movie small where cell phones and the internet don't work per horror movie criteria) factory and only source of employment closes down and leaves a 10 story apartment building standing in the middle of nowhere.
A serial killer begins picking off the residents and entombing them into the building.15 or so years after the murders Sam Walczak (Get it!) your typical female, recent college grad, demolitions expert is sent to demolish the almost abandoned building."Almost" as there are still people living there.
Of course it is never explained why a 10 story rotting building with only a few squatters and set to be demolished still has working utilities.So what scary things happen to Sam?
This mess actually only confuses the viewer, it does not add drama nor thrill.I seriously do like movies about strange buildings like "The Toolbox Murders" but the beauty of it is in clarity and simplicity.
I love horror movies, especially ones that rely more on imagination and atmosphere, this one does to an extent but then focuses on the human element and becomes more of a thriller, in this I felt a little cheated.The building which is the object of the movie is simply a nice piece of Gothic, deco art.
"Walled In" definitely looked like a horror movie with massive potential and several aspects about the synopsis immediately appealed to me, like the guaranteed horrific theme of claustrophobic death, isolated buildings with a macabre past, lunatic architects and a slowly unfolding serial killer plot.
This is a harsh and nightmarish sequence that you don't expect to see in modern day horror movie, so I started to feel very confident this could become a gem of a film.
Her father offers her the opportunity to be in charge of her very own project: organizing and supervising the demolition of a remote and sinister apartment building, originally designed by the notoriously eccentric architect Joseph Malestrazza.
The O.C.'s Mischa Barton stars as Sam Walczak, a demolition engineer whom first job is to demolish a building located in the desolate swamps of Scotland.
Upon arriving she finds that the building isn't as empty as she was led to believe (some tenants have inexplicably stayed), as well as the fact that the location may very well be haunted by the victims of the people that the architect of said building happened to entombed within it's walls.What started off as a slightly intriguing original story soon and all too readily devolved into a badly acted, scare-free, soap opera-ish.
But Wilson is right when she says the directing "plays it safe" and falls short of all these looming figures, and the accompanying cinematography is "not very innovative", which is unfortunate for a film set in a building as interestingly bizarre as this one.
DeZubiria flatly states that "Walled In" "blatantly rips off a whole series of other horror movies".Wilson and DeZubiria both find the film discourages, rather than encourages, reading of the original book -- Serge Brussolo's novel "Les Emmeures".
As I found the plot to be largely a rehashing of "Thirteen Ghosts", and the storyline as given in the film to be boring, I have to concur -- the book is likely better than the film, but doesn't seem worth my time to seek out.DeZubiria doesn't reveal the end, but says it's "so dumb that I don't want to bother spending my time explaining it", and that's a fair assessment.
In this case, however, I must say I think this film is a little underrated...The beginning and build up were absolutely fantastic in my book.
Same goes for the twists - I always like playing the guessing game in these kinds of Horror-Thrillers, and I love it when all my guesses are wrong!I've actually seen many complaints and critics talking about plot-holes and bad screen writing, and I must say I simply don't understand why...
All in all - I liked this film a lot more than Toolbox Murders, and I think it's definitely worth watching.
On the day of her birthday, the young engineer Samantha "Sam" Walczak (Mischa Barton) is assigned by her father to conduct a structural analysis of an eight-floor building with one hundred and twenty units in the middle of nowhere to be imploded by their family demolition company.
Sam finds four tenants that had received the eviction notice but are still living in the building: the caretaker Mary (Deborah Kara Unger) and her teenage son Jimmy (Cameron Bright); and the sick Burnett (Eugene Clark) and the weird old lady Denise (Jane Redlyon) that have no place to go.
She investigates further and finds that the successful architect Joseph Malestrazza (Pascal Greggory) built the building following the principles of the Egyptian pyramids and twelve years ago, one revengeful worker that has never been arrested walled dwellers in, including Mary's beloved husband, entombing the victims in cement.
Along the days, weird things happen to Sam and she believes that Jimmy might be playing a prank on her until she finds the shocking secret of Malestrazza and his building."Walled In" is an underrated horror movie, with a good and original supernatural story of insanity.
Mischa Barton plays Samantha Walczak, a young structural engineer sent to evaluate an apartment building in the middle of nowhere that has been scheduled for demolition.
The building, designed by eccentric architect Joseph Malestrazza, has a terrible history—15 years earlier, a serial killer buried people alive in the walls—and it soon becomes apparent that the horror isn't over.With its creepy care-taker Mary (Deborah Kara Unger) and her strange son Jimmy (Cameron Bright), a couple of crazy tenants, a massive mausoleum-like entrance hall, lots of gloomy hallways, and a few hidden architectural features that hold long lost secrets, there is no shortage of atmosphere in the fortress-like Malestrazza building, but the film as a whole isn't as structurally sound as its chilling locale.
Walled In is one of that movies which really damage the horror genre for many reasons,but principally,because of the tremendously weak and boring screenplay.It's like co-screenwriters Olivier Volpi,Gilles Paquet-Brenner and Sylvain White (Brenner is also the director) had access to one particular location and started thinking on "creepy" scenes,for then joining them in a bad screenplay.In other words,they just wanted the story to be "creepy" (something in which the movie terribly fails at) and not credible and interesting.We are obviously in presence of independent cinema which is only interested in the economical benefit...at the difference of the other independent cinema,whose intention is expressing the vision of filmmakers who are narrow in resources but wide on ideas.I am not against of the idea of winning money but I do not tolerate when the profits become on the main reason of the production,at the same time the telling of a good story is completely ignored.The screenplay from Walled In is extremely lame and we have an enormous number of clichés like mysterious voices,dead bodies which are hidden on the walls,the main character being stalked by supernatural forces and a huge etcetera.The attempts from this movie to scare the spectator are pathetic and I could not stop laughing during that moments.For example,a sudden cat's meow to scare the spectator ?
or did they simply wanted to make us remember a brilliant horror film inside this horrible movie ?.And the list of irritating things goes on : blood which falls by drops from the walls,surrealistic nightmares and the typical expedition to the basement,made with a torch which will fail at the worst moment.The ending from this movie is painfully predictable.The performances are mediocre,with the exception of Deborah Kara Unger,who is as convincing as always.Mischa Barton lacks of credibility and the ex-child star Cameron Bright has became on an anonymous actor without any presence.The only positive elements from this movie are Kara Unger and some moments of accidental comedy.Walled In is a pathetic horror film which kept me very bored.As I said on the beginning of this commentary,movies like this damage the horror genre,so avoid it at all costs..
It was a slow-going movie, but the end- while leaving us with a few questions- also left us feeling that if we watched it over a second time we might understand more.
Mischa Barton plays the lead role of a young, up-and-coming star in her family's building demolition business (yes, feel free to smirk) who is given the task journeying to a huge apartment building standing alone in the middle of the Canadian plains built by a world-famous architect, Malestrazza, who disappeared mysteriously and was never found shortly after completing this project.It sounds like an intriguing premise for a thriller, but also one that can quickly devolve into silliness if not handled correctly, and unfortunately that's what happens here because there were a ton of plot holes in this movie, not to mention clichéd' situations and a final that was unfortunately cribbed from hundreds of psycho-killer movies where the beautiful protagonist is captured as a love slave by the deranged killer.First off, Demo-chick is very acquainted with the career and legacy of this Malestrazza dude, yet she's never heard of the notorious happenings that transpired within his last work, the multiple murders and then his disappearance, and she actually has to google them to learn about them once she gets there?!
'Walled In' is one of the best horror films I have ever seen, and I think it will appeal to anyone who likes original and thought-provoking horror.
All these motivations come into conflict in the last act, and make for a complex denouement that perfectly follows up on the rising sense of dread in the first half of the film.If you enjoy a horror movie that combines an eerie setting, a surreal atmosphere, complex characters with unusual motivations and an extremely intelligent story that ties everything perfectly together into a coherent whole, you'll enjoy this film.
Jimmy says the eccentric architect Malestrazza is still in the building, but Sam finds out that he was one of the bodies found in his room as well as some in his walls.I really like the Spartan settings.
The writing isn't all that astonishing, original, or unpredictable, but it gets the job done.A descent enough thriller with convincing enough acting, shot beautifully and some really good set design.Again, nothing ground breaking, but you could do a lot worse.Worth watching if you're in the mood for this type of film..
About a boy that only knows like 4 people,and his best friend is a dog that has a story behind her.He is living in the strange building because his father is killed by the Malstraza who is brilliant.
Of course strange things begin to happen as secrets are revealed and the life of our heroine is put in jeopardy.Creepy movie kind of works if you can manage to over look the numerous illogical twists, beginning with who in their right (or wrong) mind would build a nightmare like the main location in the middle of nowhere?
Sam meets a mother and son, Mary(Deborah Kara Unger)and Jimmy(Cameron Bright)whose patriarch was one of Malestrazza's victims.
Sam does take a liking to Jimmy(why is anyone's guess, most viewers, I imagine, will be beckoning for Sam to stay away from this kid)and he shows her Malestrazza's "place of rest", including the holes in the wall where the victims were chiseled out.
And, what(and who)lies in that hole will test Sam's fragile psychological state(the apartment was already "getting to her", voices speaking, nightmarish images tormenting her)as Jimmy has a little surprise in store.Those who are claustrophobic might find WALLED IN a bit horrifying as it deals with finding yourself trapped without an exit.
If you like movies about spooky buildings hiding something possibly sinister, WALLED IN just might be worth your while..
Sam finds four tenants, having received the eviction notice, but are still living in the building, the caretaker Mary and her teenage son Jimmy, Burnett and lady Denise.
But that's only because she was screaming most of the time and I gave her the benefit of the doubt that maybe her character, Samantha's just a bad liar.The plot itself was confusing and it made the entire movie seem like the most interesting thing there was the building.
I was thinking "when is it going to end?!" Overall I would say that Walled In is a crap film and if you want to bother with it, it's your own untimely demise...
Which is exactly what young and pretty building demolition expert Sam Walczak, Mischa Barton, was planning to do.
Instead I got this crazy serial murder mystery involving the building's deranged architect Joe Malestrazza, Pascal Greggory,who's been on the lamb from the police since it was discovered in his monstrosity, the Malestrazza Building, some 16 tenants who were entombed by him , obviously for being late in paying their rent, in its walls.One of Joe's victims also happened to be the building's caretaker the creepy looking Mary's, Deborah Kara Unger, husband.
Jimmy who's sick and tired of taking orders from his overbearing mom Mary tries to hook up, even though she old enough to be his big sister, Sam and finally leave the place and start a life of his own.****SPOILERS*** It's then that we, and Sam, get the surprise of our lives in finding out that the elusive Joe Malestrazza has been living in the building the entire time he was supposed to be on the run from the law!
The movie is about a building by a strange architect who killed several people by "walling them in" his architecture.
The building was made using live people poured into the concrete as part of the walls, the theory being it gives the structure magical strength.Sam goes on a journey of discovery as she interfaces with the creepy tenets and caretaker, only to discover that something isn't right.Kudos to a new idea, or a new adaptation of Poe. Unfortunately the film moves a bit slow.
Mischa Barton should not be part of "horror" movies, and Cameron Bright (the kid, Jimmy), is very poor acted for a disturbed weird anti social child, that is represented as someone extroverted and self secure (I wouldn't think at a disturbed child being that way).
Never been so disappointed by a horror movie.The beginning was actually good, a bit boring but it felt like it had potential.
Walled In starts as newly graduated engineering expert Sam Walczak (Mischa Barton) is given her first demolition job by her father, Sam is to go to an old Government condemned tenement building & work out the best way to demolish it.
Sixteen people were murdered there & Sam soon finds out that evil still resides there...This American, French & Canadian co-production was co-written & directed by Giles Paquet-Brenner & was based on a French novel of the same name by Serge Brussolo which I have not read so cannot compare to this film adaptation, Walled In could have been a great little thriller as it has all the ingredients but it never quite comes together as it should.
The script starts off promisingly enough with Sam arriving at the building which has a definite art deco feel & getting involved in a mystery for fifteen years earlier about the murder of sixteen residents there & the eccentric architect Malestrazza, but then during the final third in particular the script takes an abrupt & silly turn where Walled In becomes some survivalist film as Sam finds herself trapped down a pit by a young boy who has a crush on her.
The acting is alright, nothing great but not too bad either.Walled In had the potential to be a great mystery thriller set in a cool old building full of secrets but not much happens for an hour then it turns silly.
By the way, I find it strange Gilles Paquet Brenner made this film out of France, and this kind of feature - See what he made besides, nothing to do with horror movies.