9.) The villains: A key to good horror movies are good villains. They can help crappy movies seem less crappy. (see most of the Nightmare On Elm Street sequels) The villains in this crapfest are bland. In a rip-off of the end of Saw, the main villain Gary is not revealed to be a villain until the end. The only reason given for his evilness is that his mom touched him. So being touched by your mom turns you into a Jigsaw knock-off. The other villain is the main villain's brother Ben. He's an idiot who gets killed off pretty quickly.

 

8.) The dog scene: Early in the movie, Elisha Cuthbert's Jennifer Tree is given a task: either kill her dog or she dies herself. She has 30 seconds to decide. It takes her almost the entire time to decide to kill her dog. That makes no sense. If she choices to kill herself, what's going to happen to the dog? Does she really think that the bad guy's going to take care if the dog? It just makers her look stupid.

 

7.) The script: The script for this is deadly in its blandness. It seems like a bland kidnapping thriller, but with torture scenes thrown in. There's a reason for this, but I'll get to it in a moment.

 

6.) Roland Joffe: Joffe directed The Killing Fields and The Mission. What the f*ck happened? However, he's not completely to blame for this.

 

5.) Executive meddling: Apparantly, after the film was in the can, the producer Courtney Solomon* hired a new director to shot torture scenes. Before you dismiss this as rumors, a writer for Blood Disgusting saw a version of this without torture**. Also, look at Elisha Cuthbert's hair. During the non-torture scenes, it's shaggy. In the torture scenes, it's not.

 

4.) Elisha Cuthbert: Cuthbert is a very attractive actress. She's, also, a very bad one. Her performance in this might be her worst. An appearance by a mountain lion would have actually improved things.

 

3.) The misogyny: The whole draw of the movie is to watch an attractive woman get tortured. Seriously, that's the main draw. Also, the film seems to look down on Jennifer for modeling. Now, some models have a reputation for bitchyness, but she's not portaryed as a bitch at any point in the film.

 

2.) The lack of a social commentary: As much criticism as the Hostel, Human Centipede, and Saw films get for their grossness, at least they have social commentary. Hostel's about America's opinion of itself in the world, Human Centipede's about Nazi war crimes, and Saw's basically telling audiences to better themselves or else they'll be tortured. Captivity, on the other hand, is basically about nothing other than torture. The only thing close to a message that the film has is that being touched by your mom makes you evil.

 

1.) The obscenity: You ever wonder why pornos have weak plots? The reason is that if it was nothing but sex, it'd be labeled obscenity. But, if it has a plot, no matter how lame, it avoids the obscenity label. I believe that Captivity counts as obscene. That's not a joke. It's, with out a doubt, the nadir of cinematic morality. As horrific as A Serbian Film was, it had an actual point. Sure that point was stupid (it's supposedly a parody of the Serbian film industry) but it counts as a point.

 

I was planning on doing a review of Piranha 3DD tomorrow, but I decided to change it to another maneater in the water film. Grade: F

 

Next-up: Orca!!

 

*The same Courtney Solomon who directed Dungeons & Dragons.

**Link: http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/10782/