In recent years there have been plenty of psychological thrillers to keep audiences scared out of their wits. Captivity is another in that mould.
Elisha Cuthbert, star of 24 and The Girl Next Door, plays Jennifer, a famous model who is abducted and imprisoned in a solitary room while her captors toy with her, emotionally and psychologically.
Following in the footsteps of films like the Saw trilogy and Hostel, Captivity ticks all the right boxes as far as making these types of movies is concerned. Stalking the vicitim from the bad guy's point of view; check. Isolating the victim in a shabby and claustrophobic setting; check. Throwing in a subtantial amount of gore while upping the psychological torture score; check once more.
While the film, in itself, is OK, I got the feeling that I'd seen it all somewhere before. After seeing the aforementioned Saw and Hostel, Captivity left me wanting something original, something that would set it apart from those other movies. Sadly it fails to do so and I found myself ticking off the developments in the plot in my head, rather than getting drawn into the film in any serious way. It was all here; despair, then hope and possible-but-doomed escape, a fleeting hope of rescue from the police before that hope is extinguished and then finally the victim gets some backbone and makes a break for it. All done before, all too predictable.
In an effort to inject some originality, a second 'prisoner', Gary, is introduced and, frankly, from the moment he appears it is all to obvious that there is something fishy about him. His credibility as a genuine victim never gets off the ground and as a result I found myself counting down to the moment when the truth would be revealed. The anti-climax when 'Gary's real part in the whole set-up is uncovered, put paid to any resolve I was harbouring to 'suspend my disbelief'. Any film where you can see what's coming an hour before it happens is going to struggle to really hold your attention. And that was sadly the case with Captivity.
The film was directed by Roland Joffe, who directed one of my favourite films, The Killing Fields, and I was hoping for something more than a formulaic psycho-thriller from a man of Joffe's stature. Although the gore is suitably disgusting and surprisingly realistic, the film ultimately struggles to break any new ground in the genre.
As a way to pass 90 minutes, you could do worse, but if it's originality you're after, then I'd carry on looking if I were you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment