Indie film ‘Jailhouse’ pays off in satisfying storytelling

I didn’t like “The Jailhouse” until the last eight minutes, at which point I loved it.

“The Jailhouse” is a independent film slated for a very limited theatrical release in a dozen or so theaters across the country, including Minot’s Carmike Cinema 9 Tuesday and Wednesday, May 6 and May 9.

The psychological thriller aspect of the film sets in immediately. C. Thomas Howell as sheriff’s deputy Seth Delray and his family move to the small town of Colton, N.C. Delray’s house isn’t ready yet so the county sets him up in a long disused prison, with a complex of jail cells on the second floor and a warden’s residence on the main floor, complete with 1950s furnishings.

The family barely gets settled in when a fire at the new prison tumbles an unlikely collection of inmates together into the abandoned second-floor jail cells. The sheriff is sympathetic, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Delray and his family have new neighbors.

Dark, chilling

So as a viewer I’m thinking of all the practical reasons this situation simply would not work -- the facilities are 30 years out of date and not maintained, there’s no exercise yard, there’s no way anyone would house a woman together with half a dozen men without the most basic accommodations for modesty. I’m thinking of the inmate who is still being processed for bail stuck in with possibly the oldest and strangest man in the prison system, and all of them stuck in with a psycho killer.

And I was intrigued at the force of dark energies from when Something Happened 30 years ago -- incidentally, 30 years ago was the 1980s. They had personal computers in the 1980s. The residence is furnished more from the 1950s, and the violent flashback events shown in the film were closer to 90 years ago.

So sometime 30 to 90 years ago, Something Happened that shut the prison down. Those energies drive the psycho killer right out of his tree just about from when he sets foot in the place. But sheriff’s deputy Delray is having a much worse time of it. It may be all the prisoners in the cells upstairs are awakening something dark inside of him, or he might have skipped the psych evaluation when taking the post.

But in any event he’s lashing out at his family -- it’s not long before they make a run for it -- his coworkers and the inmates themselves. It seems like the Black-Eyed Man -- scrawled as a cryptic warning into the prison walls -- may be taking over Delray, and he goes to some very dark places.

While Delray’s descent into madness is rapid indeed, Howell does turn in a measured and chilling performance – sort of William H. Macy meets Jack Nicholson from “The Shining.”

Worthwhile

The course of the film is a bit predictable, I thought -- and derivative. The kid who couldn’t make bail, Rey Valentin as Stark, for instance, is shown in a flashback partying in a bar and stumbling out the door with his girlfriend and I’m thinking “Oh hell, it’s ‘OZ,’” -- the HBO prison drama -- and that this whole thing is going to be how all of them came to be in prison and I couldn’t make myself care.

Then the old guy started doing yoga and I thought it was just going to be wacky strangeness. When Stark thwarted an attempted assault on Lindsey Mckeon as Maddy by one of the other inmates, he started emerging as kind of the hero in the piece -- especially since deputy Delray is losing it and his inmates start ...    disappearing.

While this film makes huge demands on a viewer’s suspension of disbelief and there are some issues with pacing, it does build to a towering showdown that makes the journey worthwhile. Indeed, it’s a violent film and there’s some language and situations, but it’s actually a bit reserved for an unrated indie film.

It’s certainly worth a look, so if you get a chance to track it down, I’d say go for it.