Lakewood

Directed by Phillip Noyce, Lakewood follows Naomi Watts’ Amy Carr as she’s forced to make a series of increasingly frantic phone calls after her teenage son’s high school is placed on lockdown. It’s a spare premise that is, for the most part, employed to exciting, entertaining effect by Noyce, as the filmmaker, armed with Chris Sparling’s tight screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced thriller that benefits rather substantially from Watts’ commanding and frequently captivating performance – with the actress’ top-notch work here going a long way towards smoothing over the narrative’s periodic bumps and missteps. And although the picture has admittedly been littered with a handful of implausible elements, to put it mildly, Lakewood progresses into a propulsive midsection that contains its fair share of unexpected twists and compelling interludes – with the movie ultimately building towards an electrifying climax that packs a far more enthralling (and affecting) punch than one might’ve anticipated. The end result is a typically solid effort from Noyce that does, generally speaking, make the most out of its agreeably over-the-top setup, which cements Lakewood‘s place as a top-notch entry within a subgenre that includes equally tense titles like Buried and Oxygen.

***1/2 out of ****