There’s no doubt that American Deadbolt has intensity amid its uncertain situation. Five employees at a restaurant find themselves holding up in the safest room during a mass shooting. It happens on the 4th of July at a restaurant called The American (yes, really). Everything is primed for a stirring one-location thriller about America’s distrust, gun problems, and political divide. Yet, this solid premise plays it too safe by favoring more rote psychological mind games over a bigger political punch that could be made by someone who can better read the room.

There’s a strong start to the film, as no introduction is given before the bullets fly. We’re already trapped in the room with some characters, with a few of them shot, no other way out, no way to know if the attackers are truly gone, and no wi-fi. Why no wi-fi? A dead zone would be a sufficient excuse, but the film tries to frame this as a terrorist attack meant to destabilize America. There isn’t much build-up to this theory, and it’s just tossed into the hypothetical pool among the group, as the twists grow as abundant as they are far-fetched as the film progresses.

Much like the story, the characters are also engaging in theory. Quinn (Jeff Fahey) is the elderly owner who can’t assess the situation much amid his gunshot wound. Eric (Clifton Duncan) is a quick-thinking employee who takes notice of the strange, distant boom he heard before entering the shot-up restaurant after his break. Medina (Jade Fernandez) previously served in the military and uses all her battlefield smarts to speculate on the tactics of this assault. Jessica (Laura Wiggins) is a terrified girl hiding out in the room before anybody else gets there, suffering from a bullet wound. And then there’s Reynolds (Jayson Warner Smith), a MAGA man who says MAGA things and becomes increasingly unlikable the more time passes and the more talking points he spits out. But these characters are treated less like people and more like ingredients for the plot to keep tossing twists into the mix before any cogent dialogue or action can be made.

Perhaps by accident, this is a film for made centrists. There’s rarely a moment for meaningful debate among these characters, and the story ultimately settles on the tiresome talking point about how division will destroy us all. The biggest argument occurs when Eric can hear some people pleading for help in the restaurant’s freezer. Eric wants to leave the room and help them, while Reynolds does not, fearing a trap by the terrorists. Reynolds goes overboard in asserting his authority, and while he is right to be cautious, he is wrong to be violent, judgmental, and bigoted with his nationalist talking points, with his true intent at the establishment being hostile in nature. However, Eric is also framed as bad because he doesn’t take as much caution and is mean to Reynolds. Given the bitter conclusion, the film wants us to recognize that these two could have lived if they had put their hostilities aside. But, also, that wouldn’t matter either, because the movie keeps tossing so many twists and deceptions at the screen that render any greater messaging ultimately eroded by keeping the script twisty.

American Deadbolt may have decent tension, but it lacks the ability to say much about America’s divide beyond milquetoast broad strokes. Ideally, the characters would be compelling enough in their trapped setting to overlook the indecisive/inconsistent terrorist attack and the way America itself is used as the most piss-poor window dressing for this scenario. But there’s so little time to get to know anybody in this situation that they become almost like cartoonish satires of thrillers. They spend so much time speaking about tactics and hidden agendas with no build-up to these revelations. The refusal to take a stance in this story will likely make it a political tabula rasa. Conservatives will see Eric as at fault for not trusting Reynolds’s suspicions being proven right, liberals will view Reynolds as the antagonist for his right-wing aggression, and centrists will view them equally as terrible for their distrust, ultimately dooming them both. But from this leftist’s perspective, this is an annoying and ill-thought-out movie, too standoffish to say anything about America beyond gawking at our guns and grating.