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A renowned
supermodel, Jennifer, wakes up inside a
basement, only to find out that she's been kidnapped
by a psychotic serial killer. As she tries to find
a way out, she meets Gary who's also been captured
against his will. Together they have to play the
games of the serial killer in order to stay alive
while they're being given clues as to why they're
there. Meanwhile, love blossoms between Gary and
Jennifer as the game becomes more and more dangerous.
The movie has been marketed with the tagline "The
movie that they didn't want you to see". My reply to
that was "They? Oh everyone who's actually seen it!".
A couple of months ago I reviewed the original cut of
"Captivity" which found its way to cinemas in both
Spain and Russia. I don't think that I have to tell
you twice that I hated it. It was just beyond awful.
Now, it's been re-cut with a bunch of new scenes
added into it and believe it or not, it made a lot of
difference (I was as surprised as you).
The movie has a much better pace now that the cop
subplot has been removed and the silly attempts at
mind games have been chopped away. These things have
been replaced with torture scenes starring Elisha
Cuthbert (who gives us a more convincing performance
this time around, I guess she was pleased with the
re-shoots as well). I won't go further into the plot
description since I've all ready described it two
times in the original review of it, instead I would
like to compare the two versions.
The new scenes (which are mainly torture scenes) are
quite sloppily edited in there unfortunately. The
killer simply drugs Elisha every time he's about to
torture her and then puts her in a chair. Just like
in the original version though, there's not really a
lot of torture going on, he mainly torments her and
forces her to do disgusting things. Still, this really
made the movie more entertaining. This also meant that
there was less time for nonsense chit-chat between
Jennifer and Gary. But like one of my friends pointed
out, it seems kind of strange that Jennifer (Elisha)
would come out without any brain damages after having
been drugged once every second hour for a couple of
days time (I think she was drugged five or six times).
There's also the fact that Jennifer has new clothes in
almost every scene which makes no sense since all the
cloth torture from the first cut is gone (thank god!).
There's really not a whole lot left from the original
cut actually. The storyline is somewhat different, the
ending is completely different (again, thank god), and
there is more torture going on in here this time around.
It's still not a very gory movie though, but at least
it doesn't try to be a psychological thriller anymore.
Ultimately, they've re-cut and re-shot Captivity to the
point where it's actually quite a decent film, and I'll
be honest with you - I didn't think that it was
possible to make something decent out of the mess that
the original cut was. Elisha's character is deeper,
the pace is severely better and overall, it was not
that bad of a movie. Still, wait for the DVD.
A melted body, a massacred poodle and some gunshots.
Still nothing very gory to be found in here so where
the hell did they get the first NC-17 rating from?
I'd like to see the completely uncensored version.
Just as I said the last time, pretty damn good.
Severely better than the original cut and a pretty
entertaining movie actually. I have to give the guys
at After Dark Films some credit for being able to
make a decent movie from complete and utter garbage.
I'd wait for the DVD as I still don't think that it's
a great movie but it's definitely worth checking out.
Be sure to avoid the original cut though.
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