Bullet Points: Locked In (2021)

Part of me wonders if the pitch for 2021’s Locked In sounded something like this… If there can be a long running reality series about storage units, why can’t there be a movie about them?!?

• Low Point: Mena Suvari plays Maggie, the protagonist of the film. Maggie is a woman who is at a low point in her life… her husband is serving time in prison for armed robbery, she is living in a cheap motel with her 17 year old daughter, a cheap motel she is behind on the rent on no less. Maggie also has a less than glamorous job at Safe Store, a self storage company. Maggie’s boss at Safe Store is a guy named Lee (Bruno Bichir). Maggie starts believing that her boss may be a shady character, especially when she finds a lock box filled with a large amount of cash in the office.
• Thou Shalt Not Steal: After her shift ends at Safe Store, Maggie makes her way home to the motel she calls home. It isn’t long after that, that Freddy the motel manager comes knocking on Maggie’s door looking for the money she owes. When Maggie says she doesn’t have it, Freddy offers to make “other arrangements” to absolve Maggie’s back rent, a proposition Maggie emphatically turns down. But the question remains… how in the world is she going to pay two months rent? That’s when Maggie’s thoughts turn to that mysterious lock box full of money at work… so she decides to pop in to Safe Store and solve her problem. Tarin (Jasper Polish), Maggie’s daughter, uses this as an opportunity to get some driving practice in so she tags along. When the arrive at Safe Store, Maggie tells Tarin to wait in the car, while she goes inside. When Maggie gets to the office, she goes for the lockbox… she opens it and looks at the solution to her problem, but she can’t bring herself to take the money. And that’s about the time she glances up at the security monitors and spots Lee slumped on the floor.

• Storage Wars: At the start of the movie we saw a diamond heist/homicide in Philadelphia’s famed Jewelers’ Row, the culprits are two career criminals named Ross (Manny Perez) and Mel (Jeff Fahey, The Sweeper)… and now here they are, the reason that Lee is now beat up and on the floor at Safe Store. Lee stashed the diamonds at Safe Store, while he worked on getting them fake passports so they could leave the country and go to Brazil with their new found wealth… but shady Lee is trying to pull something on his even shadier cohorts and that’s about the time Maggie shows up and sees Lee get shot… she immediately and wisely heads out to her car, but Tarin isn’t in the car! So now, Maggie and her daughter are in the danger zone…
• Diamonds Aren’t a Girls Best Friend: The remainder of the film has Maggie trying to outwit Ross and Mel, who have no intentions of leaving without their diamonds. Tarin continues to be a monkey wrench for both Maggie and the bad guys, since in typical teenage fashion she does not do what she is asked to, no matter who is asking. This is the point of the movie where Jeff Fahey’s Mel really starts to shine… Ross seems like a guy who you can at the very least cut a deal with, but Mel comes across as a true blue psychopath and Fahey radiates menace when he is on the screen.

Going in to Locked In part of me was hoping that Mena Suvari would pull a Bob Odenkirk in Nobody and be an unexpected action hero… that was not the case. But while Maggie did not have “action hero strength” she was absolutely a strong character that was the driving force of the film.

A word to the wise for action fans, Locked In is definitely heavier on the thrills than it is on the action. Director Carlos V. Gutierrez does a good job with the pacing of the film, especially considering this was his first feature length film… the tension starts building early and it is easy to question if Maggie and Tarin are going to come out of this whole ordeal unscathed.

One thing you don’t have to question is if I will be including some Bonus Bullet Points in this review…

• Favorite Word: Without question, Tarin’s favorite word in the movie is vagina.
• Familiar Face: Costas Mandylor (Stealth Fighter) plays Christopher Harris, a delinquent customer that Maggie is booting from his locker and then moments later spots having a conversation with her boss Lee on the security monitors where it appears some money exchanges hands. Surely Costas Mandylor isn’t just here to play a deadbeat Safe Store customer is he!?!?
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Mena Suvari use darts as a weapon, then Locked In is the movie for you.
• Fear Factor: Maggie suffers from severe claustrophobia. Claustrophobia has been estimated to affect 5-7% of the world’s population.