One out of
Five stars
Running time:
85 mins
The only form of torture here is being forced to watch this film – it's a badly written, poorly directed and appallingly acted mess.
What's it all about?
As if poor Elisha Cuthbert hadn't had enough kidnapping-related woes as 24's Kimmeh, here she plays top model Jennifer Tree (stop sniggering at the back there), who gets kidnapped and wakes up in a sort of hi-tech dungeon. Every so often she passes out and wakes up in a different dress, occasionally strapped to a table with a masked man (Pruitt Taylor Vince) subjecting her to cruel and unusual tortures, like making her drink an eyeball smoothie.
Eventually, Jennifer realises there's another prisoner in the cell next door to hers (Daniel Gillies) and the pair attempt to escape. But is her new-found ally all he seems?
The Bad
Captivity is so spectacularly, arm-chewingly awful that it's difficult to know where to start. The plot makes no sense at all: the script hops from one psychological torture scene to another, then there's a ridiculous (and entirely predictable) twist before it descends into outright stupidity for the final act. And not in a good way.
It's impossible to discuss how bad Captivity is without including spoilers, so if you still want to see it, then look away now. Basically, the only bad thing that happens to Jennifer is the aforementioned eyeball smoothie – it's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a fashionable Hostel-style torture porn movie but chickened out of any actual torturing.
The Worst
Cuthbert struggles to make her character sympathetic because the script doesn't give her anything to work with, while Daniel Gillies is too creepy-looking to convince as a potential love interest. The filmmakers don't even allow Vince to do that weird side to side thing he does with his eyes.
Worth seeing?
The most shocking thing about Captivity is that it's directed by Roland Joffe, who made The Killing Fields. Avoid like your life depended on it.