Captivity

Captivity (2007)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed (somehow) by: Roland Joffe

Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince

From: Some companies that should have known better

Yes, this is a movie I have seen before; it was right before I started this blog way back in 2009. I saw it at a pal's place. He helped me out by allowing me there to stay the night while I was on vacation. He decided we should watch this and even knew I already heard about its badness, I had little choice in the manner. He enjoyed it more than I did. It was worse than I remembered. BTW, somehow before the movie started I told the pal that this starred Brittany Murphy, which got him excited as he expected a certain kind of movie; I can't even blame him for thinking that way. He was OK with it starring Ms. Cuthbert once I corrected my mistake. My review of this horrible movie is below, via a review I posted on Letterboxd:

Would you believe I've actually seen this piece of crap before? Back in August of '09 I was on vacation and someone I know helped me out and allowed me to stay at his place for the night in a last minute deal. He decided that we should watch this and Role Models. The latter was fine, this one not so much. I knew all the toxic reviews this got when it came out in '07 and all the controversy directed its way when there was miscommunication and billboards in LA appeared plugging the film but they showed an obviously kidnapped woman about to be tortured then killed. I remembered that my friend enjoyed this more than I did but I remembered little of what took place in the film. Turns out, this is really bad. I felt ripped off... and I saw this for free via Amazon Prime.

The plot: Elisha Cuthbert is a vapid celebrity who is kidnapped then held in captivity as a bunch of gross things happen to her. Both Pruitt Taylor Vince and Daniel Gillies (a.k.a. Mr. Rachael Leigh Cook... what a lucky man he is) show up. That's about it. I am not a fan of torture porn; I know some people don't like the term but for simplicity's sake that's what I'll use. I haven't even seen the first Saw, let alone any of the sequels, that's how much it doesn't appeal to me. Anyhow, a lot of gross things happen and you're better off not hearing what those gross things were.

Besides the disgusting nature of the picture, it just looks like a piece of crap and the plot seems to be haphazardly patchworked together; a bunch of random things happen, pretty much. The plot is complete nonsense and aside from some laughing I did at the movie, this was no fun to watch. I have no idea what happened to Roland Joffe's career; he started off with The Killing Fields and The Mission and somehow ended up here; can I blame it on The Scarlet Letter? Even more baffling: one of the people who wrote this was LARRY COHEN. Yes, the legendary cult filmmaker. I have no idea how much he contributed to the story or if it was mainly his, how much of it was changed. I could not imagine such a product coming from him.

Personally, I am glad that this specific subset of the horror genre has died off and is all but extinct now. As previously mentioned, it's just not tailored for my tastes. Even if I did dig such movies, this is bad in other ways besides the plot so this doesn't have much to offer for any filmgoer.