Sheltered

As a group of adults are on vacation, heading for a resort, their trip is undermined by a growing hurricane, forcing them to retreat to the home of an owner of a bar until the storm subsides...what they don't know is that their host is a psychopath who hears (and answers, it seems) voices.
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Occasionally there’s a diamond in the rough. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Sheltered is a modern classic slasher film (some consider that an oxymoron), but I have seen so many rotten apples that when I come across one that is even remotely decent, or at the very least competently well made, I am almost relieved. Sheltered, for me, had a dandy premise in that what could be scarier than being trapped in the house with a killer as a possible hurricane builds outside? Where do you go? What do you do? Better still, because Joey is played by Gerald Downey (I think his was perfect casting), the killer, to those staying in his house (with a disturbing past), doesn’t carry that particular “look” so obvious for a psychopath. He’s clean cut—one could say, metrosexual in appearance—in nicely ironed shirts, a “Beaver Cleaver” type hair cut and sensibility about him, and a seemingly non-hostile manner. Yet, because Downey knows how to balance his unintimidating look with this not-too-obvious inner psychosis that seems to remain settled under the surface until able to free the beast from its cage (case in point, a junkie that is a lover to Joey’s sulking, rather intense brother, Billy (Manoel Hudec), is punched in the face, with her wrists later slit in a bathtub as she awakens in a daze), he’s quite a foil for victims too drunk and playfully oblivious to notice perhaps that darkness that could soon threaten them all.

This is an example of using budget wisely and efficiently. Settle the story inside an enclosed environ—a believable setting and scenario, too—and allow the characters to fall into a slumber of drunkenness and jovial splendor. Attentions are on the moment, not on a killer in their midst.

Most slashers provide that backstory that explains the methods behind the homicidal actions of the killer. I mention this in almost every slasher review written by me, but this is often crucial in the storytelling of films dealing with a psychopath unleashing hell on those around him. This is often flippantly and even sometimes comically revealed, but there are times when the right director and screenplay writer(s) give a shit and want to present an appropriate reasoning that doesn’t cheat the audience. While I will speak on the “visions” in a moment, the voices Joey hears seem to motivate him to kill. He was the eyewitness to a bloodbath involving a crazed gunmen home invader killing his parents. Having a talk with Joey was the killer in a chilling scene that has the psycho wanting the child to identify whether or not Billy is hiding in the nearby closet. The killer speaks of the voices and asks Joey if he hears them for which the child complies. So the backstory, told to us at the very end, explains somewhat why Joey just goes berserk at the end in what accounts to an eruption of violence built to a boil by accumulating circumstances (his rowdy guests, the junkie he kills found by Billy, Billy’s eventually losing his cool and getting into fisticuffs with one of the surfers picked up by the vacationing group, the ongoing bitching from Susan, and the voices plaguing his mind not letting up) over the night.

Stacia Crawford really left an impression as Jen, the quiet, composed, more behaving member of her party-hearty group of buddies, carefully cautious in how she approaches Joey, as their obvious attraction could be the very reason he keeps from killing her sooner. I looked at photos of Stacia since I knew nothing about her going into this film and she seems to be a blonde, but I thought she was stunning with auburn hair, even more lovely because of how she carries herself, as opposed to her best friend, Denise (Tricia Small), all over the surfer, Cody (Nick Stabile), finally deciding after quite a public make-out, hitting the basement for some extra lovin’. Allison Dunbar’s Susan is the one that stirs up the calm Joey into a rage, as he suddenly snaps her neck, in turn silencing her nagging when she follows him after Denise when all hell broke loose. Billy had found the junkie he supplied drugs to in the bathtub, and this sets him off, until he shoots Joey on accident with surfer Wyatt (Scott Damian; the film has Wyatt and Billy at odds for most of the running time, with an obvious altercation certain to ignite at some point) pummeling him into unconsciousness. That bit of violence only escalates when Joey hacks up Wyatt, Susan running for her life until he stabs her in the back with a butcher knife, then picking up a sharp piece of broken glass to incapacitate Todd (Jonathan Frappier; the member of the group without a girl to snuggle with; often dorky, with those lame jokes you can’t help but laugh at), going so far as to shoot his own brother, Billy. It just kind of all happens in a flurry of violence, really. Jen halts him with the butcher knife; right into his belly, Joey pulls it out but is soon gushing blood and hardly able to stand, much less walk.

It is an interesting slasher in that almost all of the kills are relegated to about ten minutes towards the very end of the film. One of the major critiques towards Sheltered is that it gives away too much too early. The group enter Joey’s “Hideaway” (he inherited it), and upon meeting him (they actually surprise him because the hurricane had sent most packing for a safer area), there’s a dead body (bartender?) behind the bar, brutalized with what looks like a baseball bat (with the thickness of a Louisville Slugger). Two redneck patrons let themselves at home in the bar despite Joey telling them that the bar was officially closed. He takes the bat to them as well. All of this is felt by some that this revelation is detrimental to the film because this immediately signifies Joey’s a psycho. There’s no mystery to him at all; we know that this group, with a SUV that won’t start, will be welcomed into the abode of a killer. I guess it just depends on the individual. I wasn’t bothered by it because it lets us wonder just how long it will be before Joey snaps; we know that it is only a matter of time before he would. And that sits in the back of our mind, also, as Jen is drawn to him, attracted to him. He’s handsome, very held together (it seems), polite, mannered, and has this enigmatic presence that might seem attractive to a woman looking for a potential fling…or something more, perhaps.

I can’t really dispute the questioning behind Jen’s visions (she sees events from Joey’s past; perhaps the house itself is giving off “signals” from the tragedy that existed there?), because there’s never much to elaborate on just why she has the sight. It is more or less a device that builds exposition later to be further explained as Joey relives a conversation with the killer he shoots to protect Billy. It provides some rather eerie scenes, I thought, as Jen kind of trances away, seeing the past as the present also exists, both sort of jumbled together, with the killer seemingly talking to her. I found the one in the kitchen particularly effective.

To me, this slasher does all it can to not paint Joey as some garden variety wacko, providing an insight into what torments him, even as he keeps the homicidal urges at bay as long as possible until the bloody finale where he no longer can sustain his impulses. Jen sort of has this baptism as the film closes that left me rather taken aback for whatever reason. The rains come down as her arms extend and her face pointedly looks upward. She’s soaked and quite beautiful. All of this comes after Billy, having taken a bullet in a spot of his torso certain to eventually kill him, has finally landed the death stab to Joey that will keep him from hurting anyone else. Such tragedy bookends a night of horror.

Kind of a conclusion after sleeping on it, I actually liked the fact that the cast looked more around my age than the usual hot 19/20 year olds often frequent in these types of slasher films. Sure they act a little under their age, seemingly reliving the wild days of their youth, but  it was at least refreshing to see older characters than usual in a slasher film that would typically cast younger. Also, I do wonder if viewers will have the patience to wait until the end of the film when all the violence does kind of explode because it really builds to a crescendo instead of the known "dispersing" of murder set pieces the slasher fan has been conditioned to expect. Sheltered (2010) can probably be seen on Chiller channel and was a feature in a box set of four I purchased called "Road Trip to Hell", as part of The Midnight Horror Collection.