Captivity
One of the "never before seen by general audiences" by the folks who brought you "8 films to die for", blah, blah, blah. The box proclaims it "One of the most controversial films of 2007."
This one stars Elisha Cuthbert as a super model who gets kidnapped by a sadistic guy who learned the "Saw rules to torturing folks". In fact, this whole film feels like a cheap rip off of Saw.
The first few scenes are the "This scene doesn't feel real. Are there enough extras? Maybe it's the lack of detail?" type that sort of draw you out of a film as they're trying to establish a character's emotional state. you know, the ones with very little dialogue that only seem to focus on the main character's face in different settings?
In this film, Elisha is supposed to be a spoiled celebrity, which does not come off well at all. At all. In fact, the only "spoiled" behavior comes when she mentions that she had been bad a few times to someone else. From the second she realizes she's been kidnapped her character never acts like a spoiled brat with a silver spoon stuck up her ass would be expected to act. She goes immediately into "tough chick survival mode" and it really hurts what they were trying to do with this film about torture and breaking someone down.
The torture comes off really, really poorly too. There really was no torture, more just a captor fucking with their captive. Only one moment bordered on what one could truly call torture and not just juvenile head games.
The inevitable plot twist is so blatant that it could be seen from space. I mean, it's not even remotely interesting as you'll know it the minute they introduce it. The worst part is that like another "horror" film I reviewed many moons ago, High Tension, you're given a HUGE flase clue early on in the film to try and trick you into not seeing the twist coming. What that means is the logic behind the entire twist is bullshit.
Sidenote: Attention all directors. If you feel the need to throw in items that make no sense to the storyline just because you're trying to throw your audience off the scent of your "twist", then your twist sucks and you're a bad director.
Worse yet, the twist reveals a very disturbing fact about the killer that is never explained, and it's something that needs explaining for it to make sense.
Throw in some more Hollywood cop logic (which is usually on par with Hollywood's knowledge of how the military operates) and you get a clusterfuck.
As for the "controversy", I never saw anything controversial. There was NOTHING in the film that even came close to the SAW films in terms of gore or even in the level of tension during a scene. Hell, I barely remember the main character crying let alone having horrible things happen to her. This movie could honestly air on Lifetime with only a few minor edits.
Avoid this mess of a film.
2 out of 10.