A young supermodel has been roofied and kidnapped! Held in an apparently underground bunker, the young model whines a lot and caters to the secretive man that keeps slipping her mickeys and changing her clothes while she is passed out. Soon she realizes there is someone being held captive next door; they quickly bond and she falls to reciting her erotic fan fiction out loud every time the scene becomes to much for her. Movie plods on predictably, she screams a lot, people fight, and at least there were captives to make the movie live up to its title.
In case you couldn't tell by my summary, I walked away from Captivity with a bit of anger, a slight loss of intelligence, and an ever faint looseness in my bowels. Granted I didn't have much in the way of hopes going into this one. It stars Elisha Cuthbert, whose last screamer outing was the rather lackluster House of Wax, but you'd still hope that in this day and age they would make a horror/thriller at least remotely entertaining.
During the opening credits, we watch the killer watching his videotapes of Ms. Cuthbert as he prepares a death trap for his current victim. Involving papier-mâché and battery acid, I was somewhat impressed at this guy's chutzpah and hoped for the best with the remainder of the flick. As it rolled on however and we're introduced to Cuthbert's highly unbelievable screams of terror and glimpses of model ingenuity trying to escape her new prison, that impression rolls into mild boredom as she whines as predicted, her stalker reacts as predicted, and there's really nothing new and exciting as it rolls along.
Really, that's the entire problem here: predictability. Not one to toot my own horn, someone who knows me may well remember that I made my prediction on the identity of the killer from the very first airing of the trailer. When the movie started to roll and there was nothing apparent to change my point of view, it was quite clear that they were going to let this roll on as obviously as it seemed. This is a theme we've all seen before, and they did little to nothing to tweak said formula to make it stand out from its predecessors. Sure it's got a slick set and modern aesthetics, but these changes do not a good movie make. Beyond that, there is nothing in the way of character development aside from the opening credits showing Cuthbert's talking head interviews from her modeling career, and the back of the killer's head as he works away on his scrapbook to commemorate the captivity of this blond bombshell.
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