Sophie Turner made a name for herself as Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones and Jean Grey in a couple of the later 20th Century Fox X-Men Films. She’s done a little television since then, but not much else. She has been living off the laurels of the past until now. With her new survival thriller, she tries to rekindle her almost lost career. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t the film that is going to do that, because it’s not very good despite her best efforts to try and make it so as Captain Jean Luc Picard would say.

Lauren Lane (Sophie Turner) is an older child actor who’s been on a sitcom “Meet the Peterson’s” for 10 or so years. After a data breach unveils a possible scandal, she retreats to an AIR BNB to get away from the stress of the situation. When her location is found out by some local lowlifes, she ends up in a situation of life or death survival. Add onto that a friend she thought she could trust has betrayed her and is also threatening her life. She has gotten herself literally and figuratively over her head in danger.

Turner is a decent actress. She’s been given some good roles and dialogue in the past. This is not one of those I’d have to say. The script is filled with clunky dialogue and bad line delivery. Not just by her but by the entire cast. Even though there are a few noticeable actors in the cast beside her, you wouldn’t know it by the acting. A local acting troop from any town in America or abroad, for that matter, could deliver this dialogue better than these actors did. This was some of the worst acting I’ve seen in any movie this year. Despite Turner trying her best. The script wasn’t very good either.

There were two distinct sides to this story. The first was a single location kind of situation. Once the men came to rob Turner’s character, she retreated to the safety of a panic room, which she was locked in for the duration of the film. This situation was quite literally a fight for survival for her character. This is where the filmmaker and Turner were earning their paychecks. The production value and everything that went into trying to escape the panic room was very dramatic and heart-pounding, to say the least. I was genuinely concerned for Turner’s character’s well-being during these sequences. She endured a lot.

The second part of the movie was the story that took place outside the panic room in the proverbial real world if you will. One part of that was the bumbling robbers. These guys were complete idiots who may or may not have been on drugs while doing their scenes. I couldn’t completely tell because of how bad they were. This was terrible acting on their part. Then, there was Katey Segal from “Married With Children” fame. She played a woman who rescues animals off of the side of the road and brings them to veterinary clinics for care. She finds Turner’s character dog, Georgie, who escapes during the original robbery scene. This whole sequence leads to the end of the film, but once the acting is terrible, especially from a couple of cops who are trying to figure out what’s going on. This whole sequence felt like a scene from the keystone cops. It was that ridiculous. Throw in a hit man played by Peter Mensah, and you get complete chaos.

Carlson Young is the director of this film and he has shown some promise as a director here. There are some different elements of the film that definitely worked for me despite the terrible acting. He definitely needed to hire a better casting director because whoever hired some of these actors should have been fired. This cast is filled with amateurs besides the names I already mentioned. He knows how to direct action, and certain scenes show that. His narrative structure worked for this particular movie. The script and bad acting failed him in the end.

The script was written by Gigi Levangie. I’m not familiar with her as a scriptwriter, but this story was filled with klunky dialogue and terrible acting. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but it’s true. Even experienced actors had a hard time making the dialogue in this script seem very dramatic. Both Turner and Segal are seasoned actors, and they, at times, came across as total amateurs. I could get a few of my friends from the film criticism community, and they could have done a better job delivering their lines than most of the actors in this film did. They were awful. 

Trust is a word I definitely wouldn’t use to describe this movie. I know what the title refers to without spoiling anything, but it’s not a great word regarding this film. I honestly don’t know if I’d ever trust these people to make a good film ever again after watching this one. With that being said, there are some aspects of this film and story I was genuinely interested in. The real-life factor of the celebrity getting in over her head after a potential scandal was a good idea. The panic room sequence worked for me as well. Everything else was like amateur hour. I couldn’t believe what I was watching was that bad, but it was. This movie shows that just because something gets greenest doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to turn out good. This film definitely didn’t end up that way at all.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen