I knew something was amiss before this movie even began. After a day of struggling whether to go and see this or Michael Moore's Sicko, I opted for Captivity as I figured it would not be playing for long due to its dismal box office performance. The reviews have been terrible and I am not particularly a fan of movies featuring torture but I figured that looking at Elisha Cuthbert for 90 minutes couldn't be all that bad. When I got to the theatre, things started going wrong. The popcorn guy screwed up my order and forgot to give me my soda, and the ticket guy gave me a ticket for 1408 instead. I should have just went to that and taken it as a sign. I settled into my seat and as I watched the events unfold onscreen, the only person who was in captivity was me for having to sit there and I contemplated walking out for nearly the entire running time.

Cuthbert stars as Jennifer, a fashion model who has a cute little dog and likes to talk about herself. She is being watched and is quickly abducted in the abandoned bathroom(?) of a busy nightclub. Jennifer wakes up in a room where her mysterious captor leaves her things in lockers and a metal drawer that slams open and closed. He communicates with little notes and plays games with her like Jigsaw in the Saw movies. The first bit of this movie established some suspense but then she discovers that there is a cell beside her where a guy who looks like a model (Daniel Gilles) is being held as well and the movies takes a sharp turn south. Jennifer and her new friend scratch messages to each other by etching on the glass that separates them and try to conspire a way to get free. The rest of the film is filled with their escape plans and a number of try-hard plot twists that I could either see a mile away or that completely didn't make sense. We also get a number of gory scenes such as a human organ shake, an acid shower, pliers vs. teeth, and some nasty animal violence.

When the end credits began to roll, I was mortified to see that Larry Cohen wrote the story and screenplay for this. Cohen is one of my favorite genre filmmakers and most of his scripts have been fun and entertaining. This was absolutely abysmal and I find it very difficult to believe that this was Cohen's original work. I am assuming that his screenplay was likely doctored by Joseph Tura (the other credited writer) with the instruction to make the movie more like recent franchise favorites Saw and Hostel. The idea of a person being held captive is a frightening one but when this is combined with numerous scenes of torture that feels like its sole purpose is to try to shock the audience, it gets old really quick. Some filmmakers like H.G. Lewis and Eli Roth have a knack for these kinds of scenes because they understand their audience and appear to derive a pleasure from directing those kinds of scenes. When you have an Oscar nominated director (Roland Joffe) trying to deliver gory scenes of blended human organs, however, it feels more forced that a porn actress trying to pretend that she enjoys fellating Ron Jeremy. It has also been rumoured that After Dark Films head Courtney Solomon (Dungeons and Dragons) shot a number of the torture scenes after the fact and inserted them a la Caligula so I can't lay the blame completely on Joffe.

This movie was complete and utter nonsense and felt like the entire point was to try to emulate other current movies of this sort. Combine this with a controversial marketing campaign and numerous uses of the words 'torture porn' by mainstream media and you can see that they were trying to sell this one on controversy alone. Most of the actors did a decent job but when two cops have to try to convince the audience that after questioning a suspect, they would actually ask to stay and watch a sports game will make anybody look bad. I felt sorry for male lead Gilles as he seemed completely terrible but when you have to shout "you sick twisted f*ck" over and over, it would be hard to look good. I think Cuthbert, Cohen, director Joffe (The Mission, The Killing Fields), and cinematographer Daniel Pearl (original Texas Chain Saw Massacre) must all be cursing their agents for getting them involved in this mess. I could go on and on about how terrible this movie is but I can't be bothered wasting any more time on it. This will definitely be on my 'worst of' list for 2007. (Josh Pasnak, 7/30/07)

Directed By: Roland Joffe.
Written By: Larry Cohen, Joseph Tura.

Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gilles, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Michael Harney.