Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 14, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
And so, after all the carefully finessed publicity and controversy, it all comes down to Captivity the movie. The film that hit theaters yesterday can’t help but seem like an anticlimax after all the notoriety surrounding the explicit ad campaign, the MPAA-disapproved billboards that were accidentally (yeah, right) posted and drew wrath from many corners, the extreme party staged to celebrate its release…everything but screenings that would actually allow critics to see the movie in advance, all taking place amidst a climate of debate surrounding the modern genre trend of “torture porn.”
So how’s Captivity itself? Well, the irony is that all the hand-wringing over onscreen victimization of a helpless woman is being expended on a film that, in its original incarnation, meted out far more violence to its supporting characters than its heroine. The basics of the story have remained the same in the final release version: Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) is a fashion model and actress of no distinctive personality; pretty much all we learn about her before the story proper kicks into gear is that she’s so lonely, she takes her little dog with her to club openings for company.
Pretty soon, she’s abducted and imprisoned in an elaborate dungeon by a villain with an apparently extensive art-directing budget, and subjected to constant torment that seems designed to psychologically break her. She eventually discovers another captive, Gary (Daniel Gillies), and the two must help each other stay alive and attempt to escape.
What changed after the movie was picked up by After Dark Films was the severity of Jennifer’s torture. In scenes added to the storyline in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the likes of Saw and Hostel, Jennifer is strapped to a grotesque dentist chair and forced to watch another girl having her face burned off with acid, then made to swallow a puree of eviscerated human organs and, later, blast her dog with a shotgun. It’s nasty stuff, vulgar and unpleasant rather than actually frightening, and—along with that ad campaign—represents a pandering to the basest desires of the horror crowd that fans might rightly find insulting. Moreover, these setpieces are so out of whack with the tone and sensibility of the rest of Captivity that even viewers unaware of the film’s history could easily peg them as reshoots.
And only the thickest among audiences will fail to predict a plot twist at a little before the hour mark, which propels Captivity into a third act chock full of absurd and clichéd developments. Larry Cohen, credited with the story and as one of the two scriptwriters, may have originally intended this project to be played with the undercurrent of sardonic humor that has marked much of his work, but what he, co-scripter Joseph Tura and director Roland Joffe ultimately came up with is played thuddingly straight, with the result that the laughs are strictly unintentional. There seems to be an early attempt to draw a connection between the way both Jennifer’s print campaigns and her captor objectify her, but it never gets beyond the suggestion stage. Maybe some of that stuff got snipped out (the film runs a scant 85 minutes) to make room for the torture sequences.
Also missing is any significant character development as the scenario grinds on, leaving Cuthbert and Gillies to their own devices. Both give performances that are earnest, at least, but it’s hard to maintain real sympathy for them under these contrived circumstances, and especially when one gets the sense of the producing team, rather than the onscreen villain, as Jennifer’s true victimizer. It’s entirely understandable that some will be offended by those gratuitous new scenes of abuse perpetrated against our poor heroine, but the most depressing thought is that they were added not to serve any narrative purpose, but as a lowest-common-denominator appeal to the horror crowd. On every level, genre fans deserve a lot better than what Captivity has to offer.
