Lakewood review – Naomi Watts school shooting thriller falls short - The Guardian

This year’s Toronto film festival boasts a number of films scrambled together in the last 18 months but there are two that revolve around the same gimmick: an A-list star dealing with a tense situation through a string of phone calls.

In The Guilty, Jake Gyllenhaal tries to save a kidnapped woman while stuck inside a 911 dispatch centre; in Lakewood, Naomi Watts tries to get to the bottom of a school shooting while stranded in the middle of the remote Canadian wilderness.

There’s been a shooting at her son’s school and deep in the middle of nowhere, she has to work out whether or not he went to school and whether or not he’s still alive.

But Noyce, whose experience within the genre ranges from Dead Calm to The Bone Collector, isn’t able to graduate his film from elevator pitch concept to real justifiable movie.

Lakewood is screening at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution