REVIEW: Captivity

Captivity – 1/10
Well, Roland Joffe has ruined his career. The man behind The Killing Fields and The Mission is the man responsible for easily the worst movie of the noughties. The man behind the Killing fields! Elisha Cuthbert should not be allowed to be involved with movies, with Captivity, as well as The Girl Next Door and her creaky turn in Love Actually, Cuthbert is a charisma free vacuum. She apparently picked the project as it is about a girl who goes through a tough time and learns something from it. When really it is a vile excuse to watch a pretty blonde being subjected to obscene sequences of torture.
The controversy that surrounded the despicable poster campaign, bringing harsh words from lovable Joss Whedon, shows just how offensive, vile and disgusting Captivity really is, and these people just got this from a poster, not even putting themselves through the punishment of Captivity. As the producers were presumably rubbing their hands and seeing dollar shapes on their eyeballs as the controversy exploded onto the press, it had the opposite effect, only grossing 6 million. That’s less than Catwoman’s overall gross!
Elisha is an actress, (what a stretch for such acting chops!) She has a stalker who eventually decides that just watching her every move in the open is not enough and puts her in... captivity. Elisha is locked in a room surrounded by video cameras (hello, Saw anyone?) whilst we see various shots of the stalker wearing leather gloves whilst sipping a glass of chardonnays (probably masturbating with the other hand off-screen).
Looking at her pretty face isn’t good enough, after re-watching home movies of the killer having sex with his own mother (ooh, mother issues! Someone has been watching Psycho!), this is interspersed with the same scene playing over and over again. Elisha is subjected to some torture (e.g. shoving blended human parts up her nose, burying her in sand) to the point where she nearly dies...oh and then saves her. Repeat. REPEAT. Up until Elisha’s superpower of feminism kicks in and she overcomes the killer. Yay, women are empowered. Only after enduring and hour and a half of overblown lingering torture whilst screaming daintily ‘pleaseee, I’ll do anything!’ Am I supposed to feel glad she makes it out alive? Something wasn’t right as I’ve never emerged from a screening feeling so unclean and so mentally abused.
Apart from being moral free, overtly and gleefully misogynist, for a horror movie, there is nothing frightening about this. There are no moments of shock or terror, just a sickening feeling in your stomach that this is what cinema has been reduced to and classed as mainstream horror.