Shut In (2022 film)
Shut In is a 2022 American thriller film directed by D.J. Caruso, written by Melanie Toast, and starring Rainey Qualley, Jake Horowitz, Luciana VanDette and Vincent Gallo. "Shut In" is "The Daily Wire"'s first original film and their third to be released on their streaming platform. "The Daily Wire" hosted a special viewing for the film (an original first), at 9 pm E.T. on February 10, 2022 on the company's YouTube channel. After the premiere, the film was made available exclusively to "Daily Wire" members on their website. Plot. Young mother of two Jessica  Nash is in the midst of fixing up the closet of her house so that she can sell it and move. However, she accidentally gets stuck. She tries to get her young daughter Lainey to help her get out, but Lainey is unable to bring her the key. Jessica's ex-boyfriend Rob shows up with his friend Sammy, and Rob gets her out. However, Jessica is furious with Rob for bringing Sammy, a pedophile, to her house. Sammy manipulates Rob into getting him to put Jessica back into the closet before they leave. However, Sammy later breaks in. Jessica  manages to trick Sammy into reaching under the closet door, where she nails his hand to the ground with a screwdriver that Lainey brought her earlier, trapping Sammy next to her. She yells for Lainey to stay upstairs with the baby, but Lainey comes downstairs. Sammy grabs Lainey and threatens to assault her if Jessica doesn't free him, but Jessica sets his hand on fire. This makes Sammy let Lainey go without hurting her. Although Jessica is forced to put out the fire so she doesn't suffocate herself, Sammy's hand is severely burned and mutilated, and it  appears as though Sammy is dead. Jessica removes the screwdriver so she can escape by crawling through the ceiling onto the second story. She brings Lainey and her baby to the car, but it starts to rain heavily, so Jessica lets her kids go back inside while she gets the door open. However, Sammy is still alive and he grabs the kids. Jessica runs back inside, but Sammy has a knife to her baby's throat. Rob arrives with a gun and shoots Sammy in the head, and he and Jessica try to reconcile. However, Jessica realizes that Rob will  always put his drugs before her and their children, so she slips him three grams of crystal meth. Rob overdoses, but before he dies he tries to force Jessica to do drugs, and she pushes him out a window to his death. Some time later, Jessica and her kids are shown in the house, now cleaned up, making and selling her own jelly brand and mostly happy. Production. Producers Dallas Sonnier and Amanda Presmyk acquired the film's script in 2018 from screenwriter Melanie Toast. Toast's screenplay was featured on the 2019 Black List. The film was initially slated  to be produced by New Line Cinema with Jason Bateman attached as the director. After a period of stasis, the film's option expired and Sonnier opted to take it to "The Daily Wire". "The Daily Wire" revealed Vincent Gallo's casting in the film on December 1, 2021. This marks Gallo's first feature-film role since 2013. His last role was as Harold Marcus in "Human Trust". Reception. Viewership. According to "Daily Wire" estimates, 500,000 viewers watched "Shut In" in the first 72 hours of its premiere. Critical response. Randy Myers of "The Mercury News" gave the film  a score of 2.5/4, saying that it "doesn't redefine the genre by any means but it's a polished exercise in confined terror with a very nasty bite to it." Alan Ng of "Film Threat" wrote: "D.J. Caruso masterfully orchestrates this symphony of suspense, albeit a twenty-piece symphony, but a symphony nonetheless." John Semley of "The New Republic" was more critical, calling the film "dull" and writing: "for all its desperate edginess—drugs, guns, the implicit threat of a child being assaulted, the casting of Vincent Gallo, etc.—it plays like a moralizing Sunday school sermon." Shut In (2022