How did anyone involved in the making of this movie convince themselves that they were making a worthwhile product? That's the question that kept on popping in my head while watching Captivity. With all the unproduced screenplays that are lying about Hollywood, how did something this banal get the green light? Did something get lost during the transition from the page to the screen? Was it just the wrong director placed with the wrong material? I'll probably never know. All I will ever know for sure is that life is too short for movies like this.

A mysterious serial killer dressed in a black cloak and hood is stalking the streets of New York. One would think that given the fact the guy looks like he takes fashion tips from the villain in the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, he'd draw a lot more attention walking around in public. The man has a massive underground dungeon and torture palace underneath his house, and looks like it cost a small fortune to build. When we find the identity of the guilty party and discover the job that he does when he's not stalking victims, I started to think to myself that I'm in the wrong business if he can afford all this on his salary. The killer's latest victim is a magazine model and actress named Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert from TV's 24). While she's partying at a club, her drink is drugged, and when she awakens she finds herself in the madman's vast underground torture chamber. She soon finds that she's not alone, and there's another man captive in a cell next door named Gary (Daniel Gillies). The two try to keep their spirits up while the masked psycho keeps on torturing them in various ways. I'm doing my best to be as vague as possible, but should you see this movie, I'm sure the "surprise" reveal will shock you little, especially considering that this is a scarcely populated movie, with only five or so characters in the entire movie.

Captivity has no time for characters, interesting dialogue, or plot. It's a nearly 90-minute long geek show where we get to watch the actors be splattered with blood and other bodily fluids. This is a one-track minded movie, and after some early promising moments that hint at a psychological approach, quickly derails into an endless cycle that constantly repeats itself for most of its running time. Jennifer and Gary try to find a way out, the masked villain captures them, he tortures them, he throws them back in their cells, and then the cycle repeats itself all over again. The only thing that changes is the means the villain uses to torture them. Sometimes, he traps them in a massive sized room that fills up with sand. Sometimes, he straps them down and appears to pour an acid-like substance over their faces. Sometimes he pulls out their teeth with a pair of pliers. Sometimes he mixes up some body organs in a blender, sticks a funnel in a victim's mouth, and pours the bloody substance into their mouths. At one point, he even forces Jennifer to shoot her beloved pet dog or else the killer will shoot her. Do these moments shock or terrify? No, they're just there to be grotesque. We watch the killer do something to them, then the scene fades out, and they're back in their cells waiting for the villain to pop up again and torture them. This is a fragmented screenplay built solely around how much the filmmakers can get away with under an R-rating. There is no plot, and there are no character motivations, other than subjecting or being subjected to graphic violence.

Now, I'm not a prude. After all, I have pretty much supported the Saw series so far, the franchise that ushered in the current torture horror genre we're currently "enjoying". Those films can be just as gruesome and far fetched as Captivity can be. The difference is, at least the Saw films attempt something that sort of resembles a plot, and has characters who are interesting. Captivity is the closest you can get to having nothing, and still have something to show for your efforts. Jennifer is not a character. We know nothing about her, other than she's a model and she loves her dog. We never get to see her around any people other than the masked psycho and Gary the fellow prisoner, so we don't know what kind of a woman she is. Why are we supposed to be pulling for her to escape from this torment? The movie gives us no reason or explanation. We certainly can't care about her because of her intelligence, as she often shows a disturbing lack of it. If you were in a car that was being filled with poisonous gas, would you put your hand over a single vent, when the gas was billowing in from various other vents all around you? And in another situation where she is once again faced with torture by gas, she for some reason decides to hide behind a pillar, as if that could somehow protect her from the substance rapidly filling the room. I started to wonder if the villain picked her as his victim because he knew she'd be too dumb to escape from his traps in the first place.

Captivity is filled with such a complete lack of direction and coherency, I'm having a hard time believing that human beings were involved in the making of it. Looking up their past credits on the IMDB, I can see that everyone involved has worked in different, better projects than this. Did nobody realize that there's not one single shred of characterization in the entire film? Not one character gets to display any personality or thought other than death. Even the killer's motivation is left completely up to our imaginations. At one point, we get to see an old home movie of the villain as a little boy murdering his mom in her sleep. This is supposed to terrify us, but all I could think of was who was using the camera while the kid was doing this? The camera is not stationary, it moves around and gets the action at different angles, so someone else had to be there. I'm once again doing my best to tiptoe around spoiler territory here, but when we finally see the full video, it seems even more impossible than it did the first time we saw it. Horror movies usually fall apart when logic is applied to them. This is the first time I can remember a thriller falling apart right before my very eyes before I even got a chance to apply logic to it.
Last month, I reviewed Hostel: Part II, and did not give it a very flattering review. And yet now, after seeing Captivity, I have new-found respect for the film. It's still a lousy movie, no doubt about that. But, compared to this, it's damn-near Oscar-worthy. Once we've figured out the film (which is about 45 minutes before the "twist" is revealed), we're left with nothing but non-existent characters doing terrible things to each other. Buy a ticket to Captivity, and you'll feel like a captive yourself as this movie assaults and insults every brain cell. This is a repulsively inept film, and is a strong contender for being one of the worst films of the year.

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