Room star Jacob Tremblay finds trouble of a new kind in Shut In
Young actor worked on next psychological thriller right after his breakout role
Sometimes, trouble just follows a kid.
Jacob Tremblay wowed critics with his starring role alongside Brie Larson in 2015’s Room. Just 7 years old during the shoot, Tremblay realistically portrayed a child who had spent his whole life trapped in a single room with his mother (Larson), held captive by a deranged kidnapper.
Tremblay, now 9, makes his screen return in a desolate house filled with peril alongside Naomi Watts in the psychological thriller Shut In (in theatres Nov. 11).
“This is the movie I shot after Room,” Tremblay says. “I was kind of really busy.”
Shut In director Farren Blackburn attributes the successive high-drama roles to Tremblay being “a great actor, wise beyond his years. He definitely finds himself in trouble here again, (but) he’s proven he can handle these roles.”
Blackburn wasn’t even aware of Tremblay’s breakthrough Room performance, just completed when he started Shut In. Tremblay simply blew him away in an audition to play a child who is deaf.
“There’s a tendency to overact” because of the role’s lack of spoken dialogue, Blackburn says. “It requires a nuanced performance we had to make sure we got right.”
Tremblay brings another distinctive hair look to the part after his long-haired Room performance, but went darker with this new misunderstood character Tom.
Tom is caught up in the social service system and becomes the foster child of a child psychologist (Watts) living in a remote New England house. During a winter storm, it seems like he’s a threat to the widowed social worker, but it turns out they’re both in danger from a “bad guy trying to kill them,” Tremblay says. “I had to act scared a lot with Jack (in Room). But I had to act scared (in Shut In) most of the time,” Tremblay says. “Tom’s a dark character. Not Batman dark. But he’s scared, has rings under his eyes and looks creepy.”
Tremblay says he immediately bonded with his co-star Watts, whom he has admired. “She’s been in a lot of cool movies like King Kong,” he says. “And she was really nice to me on set.”
Blackburn says Tremblay was a joy to work with for everyone during the shoot, showing that “he has this nature where it’s impossible not to love him.”
Though he missed out on an Oscar nomination (Larson won best actress), Tremblay was an awards season standout. He won America’s heart with antics such as standing on a box to accept the Critics’ Choice Award for best young actor and was photographed dancing to “Uptown Funk” at the after-party.
He has fond memories of the year: “I got to go to a million places and I met Rey (Daisy Ridley) from Star Wars.” But things will go dark again with Shut In and the long-delayed thriller Before I Wake (out Sept. 9). Alongside Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane, Tremblay plays an adopted orphan whose nightmares manifest themselves physically during sleep.
“I’ve been doing dramas for a long time,” Tremblay says. “I kind of want to be in a comedy movie or maybe something like Star Wars.”