Review: Locked Up (2017) ★

Films like Flash Gordon (1980) or Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003) are so bad, they’re good. In the former, over-the-top camp makes up for the subpar story, terrible acting, and dated visual effects. In the latter, there’s nothing intentional about the film’s dreadfulness, which makes it all the better. Tommy Wiseau poured his heart and soul into one of the best terrible films I’ve ever seen. Sadly, I cannot say the same for Jared Cohn’s Locked Up (2017).

Most terrible films are just that: terrible. Such is the case with Jared Cohn’s 2017 abomination, Locked Up. The film stars Kelly McCart as Mallory, a young American girl living somewhere in Southeast Asia (presumably Thailand) with her uncle, Tommy, played by Cohn himself. When Mallory gets bullied by a few of her classmates, she fights back, only to find herself falsely blamed for starting the altercation. 

As a result, Mallory is forced to attend a reform school. When the school’s warden (Maythavee Weiss) first shows Mallory and her uncle around, everything seems fine. However, as soon as Tommy leaves, Mallory sees a much darker side of the school. In fact, the “reform school” isn’t much of a school at all; it operates as a shady prison for young women. Mallory quickly realizes that she’s been dropped into a hell hole, where she will have to fight against predatory guards, violent inmates, and the sadistic warden to regain her freedom.

Locked Up falls neatly into the “women in prison” genre that rose to prominence in the 1960s and 70s. This kind of sexploitation hardly ever results in quality storytelling, and it’s made worse by the inherently misogynistic plots that aim to satiate the male libido with images of desperate women trapped against their will. A few directors, such as Radley Metzger, managed to elevate the “women in prison” movie above its low-brow roots. Unfortunately, Jared Cohn is not one of them. Locked Up shows that filmmakers are still using the same exploitative methods to churn out abysmal and offensive films, with little to no artistic ability.

Even if you set aside the innate misogyny and try to appreciate it for the exploitative B-movie that it is, Locked Up is still awful. The script reads like an after-school special, and every line sounds as if it was spoken for the first time as the camera started rolling.

It may be wrong to criticize the actors when the script and direction are so laughably bad, but Kelly McCart’s performance doesn’t help anything. She fails to project even the slightest bit of genuine emotion. She is meant to be scared, far from home, desperate, and eventually bent on vengeance. However, when you watch her performance, none of that comes through. Even during some of the more intense sequences, including a particularly graphic rape scene, it feels like McCart is just phoning it in.

However, it is hard to blame Kelly McCart (or any of the cast) for doing the bare minimum in this one. At the end of the day, Jared Cohn bungled the entire endeavor. He should be ashamed of this dumpster fire for several reasons. First and foremost, it cashes in on a genre that is exploitative by default. Without even a shred of artistic nuance, there is no argument that could be put forward to justify the making of this film. I can only imagine that Cohn put down the money to produce it himself, because even an indie studio would be hard-pressed to finance this garbage.

Secondly, the script is a complete mess. Even when the narrative is coherent, which is not always the case, the dialogue is insane. None of the conversations are even remotely believable. Moreover, it’s impossible to tell if the script is intentionally ridiculous, or if Cohn just lacks any sense of self-awareness.

Finally, if you ever have the displeasure of watching Locked Up, the accents are easily one of the most memorable aspects of the film. Many of the tertiary characters are clearly non-actors, and most of them only know English as a second language, or simply learned to say their lines phonetically. 

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with an actor speaking English with a heavy accent, but the script is so bad that it feels like Cohn is using his own cast as a cruel joke. It’s even worse because the accents are juxtaposed with Kelly McCart’s smalltown American girl accent, making them stand out even more. When you have women with thick accents trying to say things like “I ‘ain’t got all day, babe,” without an ounce of irony, it makes the actors look like they were part of a joke without realizing it. Some of the local actors, like Maythavee Weiss and Christiana Chaiwanna, do their best, but it’s still pretty hard to watch any of it with a straight face.

In short, Locked Up should have never been made in the first place. I like to give independent movies the benefit of the doubt, but there is nothing salvageable here. It was almost praiseworthy that director Jared Cohn made use of local actors, but again, their involvement feels more exploitative than the film itself. So, in the end, there’s not a single good thing that can be said about Locked Up, its script, the director, or the actors. It’s just a complete mess from start to finish.

Rating: ★ out of 5

If you’re a fan of “women in prison” movies or are simply in the mood to watch something terrible, Locked Up (2017) is currently available to rent or purchase via Amazon here. It is also available to stream on Netflix.