Review: Captivity (2007)

Captivity (2007)

Rated R for strong violence, torture, pervasive terror, grisly images, language and some sexual material

Score: 2 out of 5

When it first came out in 2007, Captivity was controversial less for the content of the film itself and more for its advertising. Graphic print ads that weren't approved by the MPAA, depicting the kidnapping, torture, and murder of the female lead, was mistakenly put up on billboards across Los Angeles, leading to a campaign led by Joss Whedon and Jill Soloway to get the film re-rated. I'm saying this because it's probably the most interesting thing about this film, which was otherwise a wholly forgettable torture porn flick that probably hastened that subgenre's demise in mainstream horror cinema, and most definitely killed the film careers of both director Roland Joffé (who had fallen quite far from The Killing Fields) and star Elisha Cuthbert (aka Kim Bauer from 24). To be perfectly fair, it is competently put together on a technical level, but absolutely nothing about it stands out from the crowd, with virtually no plot and few scares beyond gross-outs that get old sooner rather than later. Picture every stereotype about the violent horror films that tried to cash in on the success of Saw, only without that film's murder mystery, Hostel's satire of thrill-seeking Western tourists, Frontiere(s)' commentary on race relations and the far-right in France, or even the twisted depravity of A Serbian Film or The Human Centipede. What I was reminded of most while watching this was Cinderhella 2: Beauty Scream, the torture porn parody featured in a scene from the 2011 horror-comedy Detention.

Our protagonist, Jennifer Tree, is a model in New York who lives a glamorous life of fancy cars and nightclubs, until an invite to a charity event ends with her getting drugged and kidnapped by a mysterious man, who spends the next hour of the film torturing her. She soon learns that she's not the only one who's been kidnapped, as the room next to hers is home to a man named Gary who's trapped in a similar predicament. Together, they plot to escape this house of horrors... but can Jennifer trust anybody around her?

Saying that this movie has a plot is generous. It does have a series of events that are all connected to each other, but they are driven by ridiculous, almost random decisions on the part of the various characters both good and evil, decisions that rarely make logical sense. A major reveal concerning the killer comes out of the blue with practically no buildup, and does little to flesh out his motivations, especially given his actions in the third act. Worse, we spend practically no time with Jennifer before she's kidnapped and tortured. We learn that she's a famous and wealthy model and that she owns a dog, we see the billboards, magazine covers, and advertisements she's on, and we occasionally hear reports on the radio about the search for her, but beyond that, she's an empty shell with practically no character whatsoever. The killer apparently used interviews that she gave to reporters to figure out what she's afraid of and use that against her, but none of this is used to develop Jennifer as a character or give her any depth. We could've learned through these videos about some trauma in her past, one that she'd have to heroically overcome in order to escape -- say, having been betrayed and abused by a bad boyfriend, especially given what her captor does to her, or about how the pressures of her job and constantly living in the public eye have ruined her personal life. Instead, we just find out that she's afraid of darkness and rodents, which tells us nothing about who she is. Elisha Cuthbert tries, and she doesn't embarrass herself, but she's lost with practically nothing to latch onto; even Jennifer Lawrence or Brie Larson would've had trouble redeeming this character.

The film's steadfast refusal to let Jennifer have even the slightest hair out of place, while ostensibly justified by the kidnapper's creepy fascination with her and constantly prettying her up, also makes her nightmare look and feel a lot less convincing. Even after she's supposedly gone through hell, Jennifer still looks like she's headed out to her day job at a fashion shoot, with most of the tortures inflicted on her (burying her in sand, force-feeding her a smoothie of blended human flesh, making her think that her face is being melted with acid, forcing her to kill her dog) being more psychologically traumatizing than anything. This is a movie that could have, and should have, gone a lot darker than it actually did, especially given that doing so could've added the subtext of the glamorous fashion model having her beauty horrifically stripped from her. The recurring mirror motif that shows up throughout could've been used to reflect this (pun very much intended), juxtaposing the image of the beautiful Jennifer seen on the poster hanging in her cell with her grotesque, mangled face and body, instead of coming across as just visual flair for its own sake. Unfortunately, it seems that the makers of this film didn't want to ruin Cuthbert's pretty face, and while the film teases the viewer in an early scene, it ultimately cops out on it. There is gore in this film, but nearly all of it comes in the form of videos of the killer's prior victims, feeling as though it had been tacked on (which, apparently, it was) in order to market this as a graphic horror movie in the vein of Saw. It's clearly not about gender, as the film does show us (and Jennifer) a video of a different woman getting her face melted off with a shower of battery acid; it feels more like they were afraid that audiences wouldn't sympathize with the protagonist if she wasn't beautiful no matter what, even in a film where she's supposed to be getting tortured to death. Had this film been going for the feel of a psychological thriller, or if it had given Jennifer's character some development that would've made this mental torment hit home for her and the audience, I might've bought into it. Unfortunately, this film was made as a torture porn flick, and on those merits, it fails to deliver.

On a technical level, there's nothing really objectively wrong with this film. The special effects are appropriately nasty, Joffé is an assured hand behind the camera, and the cast members all acquit themselves well. The problem is that effective horror requires a lot more than just technical proficiency; that might get you some cheap jump scares or gross-outs, but you need to know how to capitalize on it for maximum effect, and this film fails to do so. It feels like it's just going through the motions from start to finish, hitting all of the beats demanded of a torture porn film and doing absolutely nothing to go above and beyond, be it with either some particularly gnarly set piece kills or an interesting storyline. Everything about it is just terribly bland, the talents of director Roland Joffé wasted on the film's generically grungy setting and visuals.

The Bottom Line

It's not an outright awful film, it's just an awfully boring one that feels like it was printed off of an assembly line, squandering every interesting idea it tilts at in favor of a strictly by-the-numbers experience. Maybe it was a good thing that the studio put up those awful billboards, because nobody would remember this film otherwise.