Welcome to Knockout Horror and to our review of the horror movie In Isolation. I suppose I should offer kudos to Prime Video as they managed to get me, once again, with that age old trick of changing the date of a movie to make it seem current. As usual, I clicked on this film, advertised as being from 2024, ready to check out something new.
Amazon, like the hilarious pranksters that they are, pulled my proverbial chair out from underneath me before my arse had even hit it and I went tumbling to the floor. In Isolation is actually from 2022. To be honest, though, I am just playing along with the joke at this point. I expect Prime to do this, I am not at all surprised. I will just chuckle along, pick myself up and carry on. The real joke here is just how awful this film really is.
I’m Not Laughing
From the moment In Isolation kicks off and you notice that each and every voice has been dubbed, you realise what you are in for. This is “The Room” level of “bad”. I’m talking digging through to the centre of the earth to find one single thing positive to say about the movie and still coming up empty “bad”.
The story follows a woman, Jane (Darya Avratinskaya, for some stupid reason voiced by Kira Cahill), with a troubled past. Inviting a bunch of friends over to her cabin for some rest and relaxation. When the friends spot an injured man in the middle of the road. He tells them of a virus that has sent the entire town insane. The group must now haul up in the cabin in a fight for survival against a pair of marauding killers.
The majority of the film plays out as something of a cat and mouse style thriller with the friends hiding in their house from the angry men and attempting to hatch a plan to escape. Apparently just using numbers and weapons to overpower the two ill equipped and barely threatening people would just make no sense. There is zero tension, zero stakes, and not a lick of suspense in the entire movie. It is just a boring hour and a half spent with obnoxious people in a house with very secure windows.
An Attempt At Social Commentary
The plot appears to serve as some form of commentary on recent world events and as something of a criticism of decisions made at the time. Relating the fear of the people in the house to the fear in the policies prevalent at the time offering ill doers an opportunity to take advantage.
But everything connects together so loosely that it makes barely any sense. The whole plot is like something you would come up with as a group while drunk as hell. Only to go over it the next day and realise it is little more than the inebriated ramblings of a bunch of idiots. Writer/director Alexey Meets, who also managed to squeeze out another dry thriller turd in 2022 called The Folks, has failed spectacularly at both of his jobs.
Just Awful
There is nothing positive I can honestly say about In Isolation. Acting is shockingly poor. The fact that every single voice is dubbed, despite the movie seemingly being recorded in English, makes it orders of magnitude worse. This is a baffling decision. I can only imagine the sound production was awful leading to voices being barely discernible. Forcing the makers to re-record everyone’s lines to complete the movie.
At a guess I would suggest that Darya Avratinskaya wanted no part of the extra work so they dubbed her with a completely different person. This, obviously, causes massive lip syncing issues and the audio track is pretty much mono, having no connection to camera positioning or scene setup. Alternatively, I see a bunch of Eastern European names in the production so perhaps accents were too thick? I have no clue.
Cinematography is naff. Direction is poor with the plot dancing manically between flashbacks and current events. There are zero scares, no reasons to become invested in the characters and any form of tension evaporates immediately. The film is also littered with a number of seriously terrible scenes designed to be “touching” but, instead, are laughable. This whole movie is a joke and a complete waste of your precious time on this earth. My only advice would be to watch literally anything else.
Should You Watch In Isolation?
You should definitely NOT watch In Isolation. The entire movie is a joke with nothing to praise. If the terribly dubbed audio doesn’t scare you away immediately then the awful acting, lack of scares, ridiculous plot and terrible action scenes should do the job. Don’t waste your time.