I had low expectations going into "Captivity" mainly due to the negative reviews and comments I'd read. However, I didn't expect it to be as bad as it is. It's kind of amazing to me that this film was made by the same director who did "The Killing Fields" and "The Mission", both fine movies. It's amazing because this is obviously someone with a lot of film-making experience and "Captivity" just ends up feeling and looking like a bad, amateurish attempt to cash in on the "Saw" torture craze which is so popular currently in Hollywood. There's nothing wrong with jumping on the torture-porn bandwagon, in and of itself, had it actually been a good movie. But it wasn't, and that's the problem.
Plot twists are seen a mile away and there are no genuine scares really, just a few squirm-in-your-seat torture scenes which ultimately aren't all that memorable. Elisha Cuthbert did a good job given what she had to work with. I think she's actually an underrated actress and of course she's very nice to look at. But I doubt this will be high on her resume as she continues to try and build a career.
It's pretty rare for me to find zero point in a film because I'm usually pretty easy to please with movies, but "Captivity" is about as pointless as it gets, and if it lingers in your mind at all afterwards it's only because you'll be thinking about how poor of an effort it was. If you want to find a much better torture-horror film from recent years that flew under the radar check out "Wolf Creek", it's much more artfully done and actually has some subtext underneath the screams and gore.
Plot twists are seen a mile away and there are no genuine scares really, just a few squirm-in-your-seat torture scenes which ultimately aren't all that memorable. Elisha Cuthbert did a good job given what she had to work with. I think she's actually an underrated actress and of course she's very nice to look at. But I doubt this will be high on her resume as she continues to try and build a career.
It's pretty rare for me to find zero point in a film because I'm usually pretty easy to please with movies, but "Captivity" is about as pointless as it gets, and if it lingers in your mind at all afterwards it's only because you'll be thinking about how poor of an effort it was. If you want to find a much better torture-horror film from recent years that flew under the radar check out "Wolf Creek", it's much more artfully done and actually has some subtext underneath the screams and gore.
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