Captivity

Review by Clint Morris

Thanks to the impermanent success of gory exploitation flicks like Hostel, we’ve been inundated with a slew of copycat films that are all about evoking unplanned toilet stops.

Pity most of them are about as fun as wiping your ass after such a trip.

Whilst toilet tissues are bound to be the last thing on your mind (then again, check out the lead) whilst watching Roland Joffe’s Captivity (if only because it’s star, Elisha Cuthbert, is real easy on the eyes) you could easily fill up an exercise book with things that might be potentially more exciting. And yes, doing your maths homework would be right up there.

Having said that, side-by-side with the recent Hostel Part II (yep, the fans clambered for more), and it might just prove the better film. With an interesting plot twist just past the half-way mark (though thinking about it later, it’s a fairly obvious one), some reasonably effective production values and a pretty lead (not that Hostel II didn’t have it’s share of foxes, too), it near passes muster.

In it, Cuthbert (Kimmy Bauer from 24) plays a sexy supermodel whose kidnapped with her chauffeur (Spider-Man 2 star Daniel Gillies). Seems a serial killer has them boxed in in some kind of dungeon. After they’ve bumped uglies, they might even try and get out of there.

Like a lot of these films, the filmmakers seem to be determined to bog the film down in as much sickly and unnecessarily distasteful imagery as they can and ultimately (and this is where the Saw films have gone wrong too) it loses the viewer because of it. Sometimes not showing everything is more effective than displaying someone’s guts hanging off a wall heater – the mind is the most imaginative beast of all, after all.

To be informed of someone’s acid-scarred flesh is one thing, to be shown it is – well, its frickin’ disgusting. 

2.5 out of 5

Captivity
Australian release: 8th May, 2008
Cast: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor-Vince, Laz Alonso
Director: Roland Joffe