Sometimes a movie doesn’t have to be an adventure into chaos, or demon slaying mythic arts, but instead a window into the soul and the destruction around it. Landlocked is the latter, and it’s an interesting take to preserve memory and those thoughts and moments we hold near and dear to us.
Landlocked is that exact movie, it focuses on Mason played by Mason Owens and written and directed by Paul Owens. Mason discovers a video camera on the land of his soon to be destroyed childhood home and starts to watch old footage of his life from childhood. This makes Mason want to record everything while he still can before his house is taken away from him and those memories are only left in his mind. It is a very touching film, that falls a little short of meeting the mark. Recollecting memories, while creating new memories in a childhood home is the groundwork of something great but something deeper needs to be created from that premise.
What works in LandLocked is that the Owens’ both Mason and Paul give it their all both creative and theatrically. However only the groundwork is there, they don’t build on the creepy idea of a being summoned back to the home, finding the camera, etc, there aren’t any real stakes. Everything is just emotionally driven, and that is evident in the performance that Mason gives but it lacks that extra punch the film needs.
What works for Landlocked is the personal performance that Mason Ownes gives, where Landlocked fails is that it doesn’t deliver past that. The premise is a simple one, and needs to evolve into something more, in any direction, with a little hint of time moving, the film just falls short of providing something more than meeting the surface.
