Directed by Roland Joffé
Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince
Release date 22 June 2007

A successful fashion model is kidnapped and subjected to a series of tortures…

Roland Joffé directed The Killing Fields, one of the most important movies of the 1980s. Inexplicably, he’s also behind Captivity, one of the worst movies of 2007.

Obviously made to cash-in on the success of ‘torture porn’ hits Saw and Hostel, Captivity is a much tamer affair despite its disturbing billboard poster being banned in the States. Saw and Hostel had their flaws, but at least there was an inventiveness to both the story and the gory set pieces. Captivity’s plot is virtually non-existent – a model is tortured and, well, that’s about it. While the scene in which Elisha Cuthbert is force-fed blended body parts raises a chuckle, there’s little else that’s memorable or original about the movie.

You’d think that Cuthbert would be well used to playing the role of hostage – after all, it’s how she spent the majority of her screen time in 24. But while the actress might seem the perfect choice to play a beautiful, plastic-faced model, Captivity exposes her limitations at expressing emotional extremes – never once do you believe that this is somebody undergoing a traumatic experience. Daniel Gillies, as her shady co-captive, is equally lacking in personality. The sequence in which these two non-entities get it on in full view of the cameras has to be the year’s least convincing sex scene!

Joffé is unable to wring any kind of tension out of all of this, and he’s not helped by an increasingly ludicrous script. Writer-for-hire and sometime director Larry Cohen has always been hit-and-miss in his choice of projects (his films range from Phone Booth to Maniac Cop 3), but Captivity has to rank as one of his dumbest efforts. Dialogue rarely strays beyond cries of “YOU SICK TWISTED FREAK!” and it’s the sort of film where not one but TWO killed-off characters are able to miraculously spring back to life. Woeful. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 3/10
Depressingly stupid psychological thriller.