Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10534 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-29
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 81 minutes

Special Features
Exclusive interview with Elisha Cuthbert Making of Featurette Deleted Scenes Alternate Endings

Synopsis
Another unsettling contribution to the torture genre spawned by films like SAW and HOSTEL, CAPTIVITY treads similar terrain while bringing something new to the table. Elisha Cuthbert (THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) is Jennifer, a celebrated runway model who leads a relatively lonely life. One night, after being stood up at a club, she’s drugged and wakes up much later in an intricately constructed dungeon. The captor is a mysterious presence who has clearly done this before. As time goes on, the taunting and torture reach nearly unbearable proportions. But before she gives up all hope, Jennifer discovers Gary (Daniel Gillies), another victim, who is determined to break them both out of their horrific prison.


A shocking departure for director Roland Joffe, who is best known for helming the 1980s classics THE MISSION and THE KILLING FIELDS, CAPTIVITY is more recognizable as the work of co-screenwriter Larry Cohen (IT’S ALIVE, MANIAC COP, CELLULAR). Stylish and brutal, and featuring another haunting score from Marco Beltrami, CAPTIVITY features a mid-film plot twist that takes the picture to a whole new level.

Customer Reviews

Unimpressive "Horror" Movie
Earlier this year, the genre often described as torture porn reached what is perhaps its height with "Hostel: Part II". That film thus far qualifies as one of the year's best and certainly stands as the most superior horror movie of the year in this reviewer's opinion. Enter, then, "Captivity", a mind-numbingly nonsensical gorno item that conforms to conventions too often, but nevertheless manages to invest into itself intermittent moments of invention and cleverness. Overall, "Captivity" is a mediocre horror movie that boasts a fair amount of bland and acting, as well as an abundance of illogical and downright stupid plotting that all serves into a pale, tedious climax. As it stands, calling "Captivity" a "Saw" rip-off almost seems too easy.

Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) is a shallow and vain supermodel-actress unknowingly being stalked by a deranged madman with a tendency to mutilate and torture people. After being caught-out drunk by the camera-armed man, Tree is whisked away to a dark, gloomy building and wakes the next day to find herself being toyed with and tortured by the aforementioned crazy person. As the murderous games the killer plays begin to pile up, Jennifer, along with fellow captive Gary (Daniel Gillies), tries to figure out her escape before she meets the same grisly end as the killer's previous victims.

Elisha Cuthbert is a talented actress featuring in too many forgettable slasher films like this. To see her occasionally venturing into the horror domain is good for this horror-fan, but when she's wasting her time in films like "Captivity" and, indeed, 2005's "House of Wax", she comes off as disappointing. At least in "House of Wax" she played her role with more conviction. As Jennifer Tree, Cuthbert seems to be going through the motions and doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in the movie she's featured, which comes complete with hammy dialogue for her disposal. Comparatively, Gillies makes Cuthbert's okay performance look simply sublime with his downright terrible portrayal of captive Gary. When the audience has been put through his acing for more than ten minutes, we just hope he gets eviscerated soon.

Though it is visually and stylistically competent, "Captivity" is plentiful in its written flaws. Indeed, director Roland Joffe and cinematographer Daniel C. Pearl do their best to make the movie easy on the eyes, but cannot quite make up for the appaulingly inept script by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura. The leaps in logic are vast and numerous. A sex scene arrives straight out of left-field and is immediately ridiculous; We're meant to believe Jennifer is shallow and vain from, what, a couple of television interviews and nothing more; The dialogue is hokey and clunky to say the least, with clangers coming at a two-minute rate; And the suggestion that Jennifer and Gary have their heart set on escape is contradict by them only making such a venture once or twice in the movie's running time.

Re-shot so as to inject as much gore as possible into the final project, "Captivity" arrives on the big screen bankrupt of enough redeeming qualities to dismiss the idea that the movie may exist for the sole purpose of turning stomachs. In its portrayal of viscera and sadism, "Captivity" is shocking and uncomfortable to watch, but when the movie reveals little else of depth beyond the blood-spillage, a particularly sour taste is left in the mouth. It isn't my belief that movies of "Captivity"'s ilk are creatively limited upon conception, but when they're manipulated and edited in the manner that this outing is, they are rendered that in turn. "Captivity" is not a terrible horror movie, but because it prefers gore over character and story depth, as opposed to mixing the two like the earlier mentioned "Hostel: Part II", it doesn't do much to distinguish itself from the mainstream crowd.

Dimwitted and vile, "Captivity" has understandably been slaughtered since its cinematic release. Such hatred towards the finished project probably isn't as warranted as it is, but this horror item certainly treads dangerously close to becoming a bad movie. Eventually, though, it becomes apparent that "Captivity" is thoroughly average, not good enough or bad enough to retain a place in the memory for a substancial amount of time. As a collective horror effort, "Captivity" doesn't impress.

Boring version of Saw 1
If you're after clever films with great twists, excitement etc - this film isn't the one.

After watching Saw, this just seems incredibly slow and predicatble.
The plot is stupidly similar (with the kidnapping, guy watching, hidden camera blah etc) but with a boring, anti-climatic twist towards the end.

Had Saw never been made, I think I would have enjoyed it quite a lot.
But you just can't help thinking of how much better it is throughout, which makes it a very boring watch.

Save your money and buy the Saw or Hostel films, they're much more imaginative.

Cuthberts acting falls short in this horrendous "horror" film.
Like most, I read the unbelievbly bad reviews for this movie, but told myself It wouldn't be that bad - surely, right? Wrong. Turns out, this time, I should have just listened to the critics (something I never do, but this is an exception - because they were right. 100% spot on.

When the credits rolled, I was slightly baffled as to why this movie was made in the first place. I have never watched a movie that serves no purpose whatsoever and lacks everything from anything in a film. The direction of the movie was horrible and the bad dialogue was ridiculous at times.

I will admit, I have been a fan of Elisha ever since I caught her in teen comedy "The Girl Next Door". I thought she had a great fresh face and real acting abilities - which she proved later on, becoming a regular on the hit sci-fi show "24". But after watching this movie, I'm really shocked at her performance. It's almost like it's her first movie. Or first acting role ever!

There are so many flaws to this movie that it would be impossible to name them all, but I will point out the big dud moments that made me hate this so called "Horror".

The opening was pretty predictable and almost boring - not a good start! The film so desperately tries to be like the Saw, Hostel movies, that you notice it almost 3 minutes into the movie. Although the deaths were sorta inventive, it's nothing we haven't seen before. It brings nothing new to the table. It's simply just "another one of those movies", one of the worst takes on the torture-porn, gore franchise that American directors seem to be obsessed with today. I mean, If you've seen Saw - you've seen them all. Not one of these "movies" stands out from the rest, they all mesh into one horrible gore fest of a movie. Now, the actual film. There is a scene in the movie that was acted out very badly and had to be mentioned. The scene features only Elisha herself (no dialogue) yet it's pitiful. Seing as how her character is a top fashion model, she is invited to a charity wine mixer (or something like that) and like any celebrites duty, it's crucial she goes. Elisha orders her drink and sits alone. The bar tender fixes her drink and leaves it on the bar while he fixes some more. Someone (unknown) spikes her drink. The bar tender then gives Elisha her cocktail. The problem with this scene is, as soon as Elisha takes 1 sip, she starts acting all weird (no longer than 3 seconds after her first taste). Now we all know the effects of a drugged drink do not happen that quickly. It was almost like watching a 5th grader in Drama class acting out a scene - but clearly doing it wrong. It looked half-hearted and actually appeared as though Elisha was tired that day and just couldn't be bothered acting. It's such a clumsy mistake and stupidly left unfixed. It really angered me and it came across very sloppy. This then follows a very dazed Elisha, stumbling to the bathroom - terribly I might add.

She then wakes up in an almost cell like room, were a man is toying with her. Playing sick deranged games, while she fights for her life. She is held captive, all alone (or so she thinks), in a strange house. The "killer" is not in sight, but he makes sure she knows he's watching. The first few scenes are pretty intense and creepy, - but when they use the same idea/scenes over and over again, it gets very boring, very quickly. She soon discovers another person is being held against their will. A man. They quickly manage to gain physical contact with one another and try escape this nightmare and take out the bad guy.

"Apparently" during all this hell, she falls in love with him........huh?? I know, confused? Me to. You don't fall in love with someone you have known for less than 24 hours! Especially the situation these two are in. When a mad man holds you captvie and is trying to kill you, the last thing you will be thinking about is love, or attraction for that matter. All you wanna do is get outta there. Ridiculous plot. This soon follows a sex scene, which comes off incredibly cheap and tacky. It's so obvious it was only thrown in for the simple reason of having a sex scene. By this point I had lost all hope in the movie. The direction was becoming catastrophic.

I will not give away the ending, but all in all the movie sucks! BIG TIME! This coming from a big Elisha fan. I'm now wondering if Elisha is actually a strong, capable actor at all. Or was the movie so bad that even she couldn't save it. I'm not exactly sure yet. All I know is, it was a poor excuse for a horror movie. In fact, I've seen straight to dvd releases, B-movies, D movies even, that look like Oscar winners compared to this.

While I'm not a fan of the Saw, Hostel movies. I would take them over this anyday.

The film is called Captivity. Someone would have to hold me captive to sit through this ridiculous tripe all over again.

0/5 stars.