Captivity

Halloween ’07 has come and gone. I spent my Halloween evening playing Guitar Hero 3 while I waited for trick-or-treaters to pound at my door and plead for selections from my bowl of delicious, delectable delights: Snickers, Milky Way Midnights, 3 Musketeers, and Sour Starburst. My candle-lit, skull-face pumpkin illuminated my porch. I passed a bunch of songs on hard (some four stars, some five). I beat Tom Morello. I played some Sabbath. I waited for the knock-knock-knock. I waited. Played some Priestess. Waited some more. Waited…waited………………….waited. No knock-knock. No trick-or-treaters. No one came. I switched off Guitar Hero and turned on the Nuggets/Sonics game. I blew out my pumpkin’s candle. I shut off my lights. 9:15pm. Knock-knock. Two trick-or-treaters--little draculas--at my door. I held out the bowl and said, “take as much as you want…big handfuls.” That was it. Two kids. Then I watched Captivity.

Captivity is directed by Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, Super Mario Bros.) and stars some TV actress named Elisha Cuthbert. She’s the girl from 24. That’s how everyone refers to her: the girl from 24. I don’t watch 24. Kiefer Sutherland sucks. Your Kiefer Sutherland is my Al Pacino (okay, that doesn’t make any sense but I’m going with it). Miss Cuthbert plays a magazine model named Jennifer Tree. Tree as in tree. I’m not sure if there’s a metaphor there. She has an annoying little dog that she take’s everywhere. She’s lonely. You can tell she’s lonely because she goes to a club by herself (well, she takes her dog, but that doesn’t count). She does some texting*. She sits alone. She orders an apple martini. Someone is stalking her and videotaping her. This someone puts some kind of sedative in her appletini. She deserves it for drinking an appletini**. A little while later, she wakes up…..IN CAPTIVITY***.

The abducted Tree is locked in some sadistic fucker’s basement. She gets really pissed when she realizes she’s a captive; she throws stuff around the room, tips her bed over, and raises quite a ruckus****. The kidnapper gives her keys and clues and clothes and none of it makes any sense. There are some numbered lockers in her room (1,2,3,4) and the keys correspond to the lockers like some kind of game is being played. The kidnapper comes in the room once in a while and drugs Jennifer. The screen goes black. She wakes up strapped to a gurney and awful shit happens. She gets to watch a video of a previous captive receiving an acid shower while she (Jennifer) lies under the dripping shower head. The killer forces Jennifer to drink a smoothie made from fingers, ears, and spleens (he doesn’t even have the common decency to add some vodka). This scene is very unsettling. In fact, the first one-third of this movie is pretty sick. But it’s Halloween, right? Go for it.

A little while later (time is completely irrelevant in this film), Jennifer wakes up from another drugged stupor and finds out that she’s not alone in the basement. Some dude named Gary is being held captive in the room next door. They can see each other through a glass wall. They converse. They try to escape. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other’s safety. A human hourglass*****. A molar torn out with a pair of pliers. They kiss. They fall in love. They…

The rest of the movie involves a lame twist that I figured out the moment it was set up. Right away. No doubt in my mind. A killer’s identity****** is revealed and his motivation is explained: mommy issues, of course. Jealousy, brothers, knives, a shotgun, and a couple of cops. The final scene is totally unconvincing.

I’m trying to think of something positive to say about this movie. Some of the shots are kind of cool. The entire movie was filmed in Russia and I like the Russian people. The torture scenes are intense and uncomfortable to watch but that’s simply because they’re torture scenes. I’ll always find them disturbing. They’re not as bad as the scene at the end of Audition or the blood bath scene in Hostel 2, but they’re still sick. My final recommendation is that if you want to see a torture movie (and who doesn’t?), rent one of the Saw movies or Hostel or a Miike film.

*It is my personal theory that text messaging will become more prominent in film as smoking becomes less prominent.

**Just kidding. I don’t condone drugging people. It’s not cool. It’s illegal.

***Captivity is the title of the movie.

****The only words that I can think of that rhyme with ruckus are suckus and fuckus and neither one of them is a real word. Maybe Dick Butkus.

*****This is a method of torture that probably sounded cool on paper, but upon execution turned out to be totally retarded.

******It’s that dude with the weird eyes from that movie, Identity. Don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler. He looks good in a bath robe. Nice abs.