Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies
Directed by: Roland Joffé
Written by: Larry Cohen, Joseph Tura
Studio: After Dark Films
Elisha Cuthbert is a little hot. Not especially bangin', but not one of the stranger looking actresses out there. Also, she's not the youngest and brightest of stars out (t)here in Hollywood Land.
Despite these considerations, would I still bed her?
That's what I thought about the entire time as Captivity ran it's ugly course on my tiny HD tv. Not, "Oh my Lord, will she get out alive?!" or "SHIIIIT HE WAS IN ON IT ALL ALONG!" or even "What a biting commentary on modern sexuality!". Nope, none of that.
Ok, to be fair, my mind wandered on occasion and I thought about getting some tacos, what I should do during my downtime at work this week, and where in fact all the cowboys have gone. But never once was I engaged at all by what transpired in Joffe's tortureporn anti-thriller, Captivity.
Eliza portrays some cold-hearted model icequeen that two incestuous brothers (not kidding here) kidnap. They subject to her to a number of grotesque and crude tortures that never achieve the horrifying apogee of the original Saw movie but instead bored the fuck out of the viewer. Buried in a box of sand, shotgunning her annoying rat of a dog, ingesting blended body organs - no lies, I yawned more than once through these scenes. Not that concepts themselves aren't repulsive and cringe-worthy, but the execution is sheer crap.
I still don't have an answer re: the issue of Cuthbert: yay, or nay? - so, let's give me some time by go through the cinematic motions.
Writing: Get out of here.
Direction: No intense shots whatsoever despite (potentially) jarring content. We get some shots from the perpetrators' POV but they contribute precisely squat to the narrative/experience.
Acting: It's friggin' the annoying ass daughter from 24 and John Jameson from Spiderman 2. What the hell do you expect?
Editing: I could collect a sizable hill out of the extraneous footage, especially the beginning scenes.
Sound: Added nothing. I guess Cuthbert's screams were pronounced?
Soundtrack/Score: I think I heard two songs the entire time and they were snoozers.
Self-Awareness: The ending for the DVD version is different from the theatrical release and it's a BIG SHOCKER OH LORD. Given there were two twists in this version (the incestous brothers being the other, kinda one) I feel the story has some, but very limited, sense of what it is. And that sense amounted to, "Wait...instead of one twist...WHY NOT TWO!?"
Overall rating: * 1/2
Yay?! or Nay?: ehh, yay sure why not it's been so long. :(
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