Chris’ Foiled Attempt to Review Captivity
Captivity Review #1
More Elisha Cuthbert Pictures Here
NOTE: I am fully aware that there is only one thing many of you care about. And no, you do NOT get to see Elisha Cuthbert’s boobs. Put your crank back in your pants, put the Palmolive back next to the sink, and save your money.
Well, after silly publicity stunts and a pushed back release date, POSTER: THE MOVIE (or, as After Dark insists on calling it, CAPTIVITY) finally arrives in theaters with a whimper. In two weeks it will leave in dead silence with an Irish priest reading its last rites. You can tell a movie sucks when the ad campaign is more interesting than the movie it’s advertising. It seems like only yesterday when LAST ACTION HERO was advertised on the side of an unmanned NASA rocket. And THAT movie sucked too.
The trailers trumpet it as “THE MOVIE THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE!” “They,” in this instance being your friends and your family, because they don’t want you to spend money on boring shit. Not when THE MAD is on video shelves all unwatched and unloved and 1408 is playing at the theater a door down. Sure it’s PG-13, but at least it’s in possession of the knowledge that horror movies are supposed to be… Umm… Scary?
CAPTIVITY stars a plank of wood with blond hair that everyone started calling “Elisha Cuthbert” one day for no real reason whatsoever. She plays Jennifer Tree, a vapid and self-absorbed actress/model with one of those Goddamn foo-foo dogs that she takes everywhere. One night at a club, she’s slipped drugs in her Appletini and she wakes up in the basement of a dungeon in Manhattan. She’s fucked with for about five minutes, then she’s drugged and we fade to black.
She wakes up and then she’s fucked with for another five minutes, and then she’s drugged and we fade to black.
She wakes up and then she’s fucked with for YET ANOTHER five minutes, and then she’s drugged and we fade to black.
No points for guessing what happens next.
Somewhere in all of this, she meets up with a fellow captive (Daniel Gillies) and then BOTH of them are fucked with for five minutes until they are drugged and we fade to black. BETCHA DIDN’T SEE THAT COMIN’, HUH?
Y’know for a movie with an ad campaign so controversial, and being all eager to hop on the rapidly dying “torture-porn” bandwagon, this movie is actually pretty tame. The worst thing that happens to her is that she is fed the liquefied remains of a previous victim through a funnel. And that WOULD be gross, if it didn’t look exactly like the sweet and sour sauce that you get at Chinese restaurants. The only really bad thing that happens to her is that she’s forced to do in her yappy little foo-foo dog with a shotgun. And believe you me, that’s a blessing in disguise. All they do is shake and piss everywhere.
I know some folks don’t like the use of the term “torture-porn,” because you feel it demeans the horror genre. But it’s true. If you have gore at the expense of a story, that’s what it is: “Porn.” Just like how Porn has sex instead of a story. See how that works? And not all torture-porn is in the horror genre. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, anyone?
Some people go to the movies just to see blood and guts and hey, it’s as good a reason as any. Just ain’t for me. I like gore, but I like it in something that resembles a narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end, and not a most, shapeless mass like CAPTIVITY. That way, when I see someone eviscerated, I actually SEE someone eviscerated. Otherwise, it’s just a makeup job and a shaky camera and an actress embarrassing herself. But in CAPTIVITY, there little to no torture to be found, if you’re in to that kind of thing.
Guess that makes me an “Egg-Headed Destroyer.” I should be ASHAMED for actually wanting a movie to be good. Oh well…
How about that actress, huh? Cuthbert just plain doesn’t want to be there. Not in the character sense, but I think she LITERALLY didn’t want to be on set. Like she was being held up on the way to her next audition. I would imagine, were a young lady being contained and tormented, that she would… I don’t know… Put up a fight? Start throwing punches? Scratching? Biting? And putting forth an effort to SCREAM every once in a while, and not engage in what her acting coach ASSURES her is screaming? You know, that loud slow-motion laugh that Bijou Phillips did in HOSTEL PART II?
The most depressing part about CAPTIVITY is that actual TALENTED people were behind the camera. Director Roland Joffe is a two-time Best Director Academy Award Nominee for THE MISSION and THE KILLING FIELDS (He also did that ass-awful adaptation of THE SCARLET LETTER with Demi Moore, but that’s neither here nor there). Writer Larry Cohen has pumped out some good movies like PHONE BOOTH and CELLULAR. This just goes to show that no matter how good a director is, this kind of movie just can’t be done well. There’s only so much you can do with cramped spaces and rust. Getting a homeless crackhead to with no film experience to direct a movie like this would be redundant. These movies like WOLF CREEK and HOSTEL and CAPTIVITY could be directed by a SCULPTURE of a homeless crackhead with no film experience.
And yet, some people will buy a ticket and enjoy it. And ya know what? Cool. More power to you. You, sir or madam, are certainly much less picky than I. But it kinda makes me think of one of the most novel concepts ever to come out of the twentieth century.
I am speaking, of course, of the “Hot Karl.”
The Hot Karl, for those of you not in the know, is when your beloved (male or female) dangles their starfish over you like the sword of Damocles, grunts a little bit, and squeezes out a big, stinky fudge-dragon on your chest. Now I have never seen, nor have I been a party to, a Hot Karl. It’s one of those things a lot of people know about and exists only in the darkest recesses of the human mind. Or, failing that, Germany.
So if you like blowing your money on movies like CAPTIVITY, it’s just a preference for you. It’s where you and I differ.
Hey… Some people actually like getting SHIT on.
1 out of 4
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