Presents

Captivity

It may be over folks, the long national nightmare of 'torture porn' may have finally run it's course...if we're lucky!  I say that, having just sat through Captivity, a 'torture porn' movie that tries to dress itself up a bit more than most...but the dress is a bit tattered and dirty, if you know what I mean.

  The story here is fairly simple, a young model is stalked and kidnapped by someone who seems to have experience at torturing people.  When she discovers that there's someone else being held captive too, she clings to some hope that together they might escape from the clutches of this madman.  That's about all there is to this movie, while it has the obligatory 'unrated' label on it's cover, there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before (sadly).

Here's the real issue with Captivity.  Despite a couple of fairly interesting set-pieces, there's nothing really new or innovative here.  This is your standard 'torture porn' (and I have to admit, I hate that label for these films!), the whole movie seems to be set up for these gory little scenes, and, while those scenes are pretty cool, the movie would have benefited a bit more from a little more story.  Once we're given the back-story of the killer, we've pretty much already figured it out.  Oh, there are a couple of twists, but they come so late in the movie that we're already looking for them.  I'm giving Captivity two out of four cigars, because, if you're going to make one of these gruesome little movies, then you might as well do something a bit different than everything else is out there.  Sadly, the best part of Captivity was the controversy it generated before the film was released over the billboard ads, but if you're a fan of Hostel and the like, then you'll probably enjoy Captivity.  If you, like me, enjoy a movie with a bit more story, then you'll be left flat!  So, until next time, when I'll tell you about the girl I once held captive in my basement, well, not really a girl, but a female dog, and not really captive, I just closed the basement door...until then, remember that the best movies are bad movies.